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THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
Edited by JOHN H. KERR, D. D. 



THE TEACHING OF JESUS 

CONCERNING 

GOD THE FATHER 



Archibald Thomas Robertson, D. D. 



THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 

CONCERNING 

HIS OWN MISSION. Frank H. Foster. Ready. 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE CHURCH. 
Geerhardus Vos. Ready. 
GOD THE FATHER 

Archibald Thomas Robertson. " 

HIS OWN PERSON In preparation. 

THE SCRIPTURES 

CHRISTIAN CONDUCT 

THE HOLY SPIRIT 

THE FUTURE LIFE 

THE FAMILY 

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 

A Series of volumes on the "Teachings of Jesus" 
by eminent writers and divines. 

Cloth bound. i2mo. Price 75 cts. each postpaid. 

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 



THE TEACHING OF JESUS 



CONCERNING 



GOD THE FATHER 



By 
Archibald Thomas Robertson, D. D. 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

150 NASSAU STREET 
NEW YORK 



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Copyright, igo& 
By AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 






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TO MY FATHER 

WHOSE LOVE IS 

KIN TO THAT OF GOD THE FATHER. 



PREFACE 



rHE object of this volume is to tell 
in straightforward manner the 
message of Jesus concerning God 
the Father. The book is written after 
much study of what men have written 
concerning God and in sympathy with 
all the truth that modern scholarship has 
to offer on this great theme. But in har- 
mony with the plan of the series no 
references to the literature of the subject 
cumber the pages. The bulk of the book 
is the result of direct exegesis of the 
words of Jesus. We come reverently 
with Philip to Jesus and say: "Lord, 
show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." 
A. T. Robertson. 
Louisville, Ky. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. The Importance of a Knowl- 
edge of God. Modern Ideas 

about God I 

II. The Old Testament Idea of 
God the Basis of Jesus' Teach- 
ing 14 

III. Jesus the Revealer of God the 

Father to Men 24 

IV. The Relation of the Father to 

the Son 43 

V. The Relation of the Father to 

the Holy Spirit 70 

VI. The Relation of God to His 

World 85 

VII. The Relation of God to the 

Unsaved 100 

VIII. The Relation of God to Be- 
lievers 117 

vii 



viii Contents 

PAGE 

IX. Jesus' Conception of God Com- 
pared with the Apostolic 

Teaching 138 

X. Jesus' Conception of God the 

Ruling Idea of Theology. . 155 

XL Summary 167 

Indices 171 



CHAPTER I 

The Importance of a Knowledge of 
God. Modern Ideas about God. 

" None is good save one, even God " (Mark x. 18). 

rHE picture of a world without 
God is horrible to contemplate. 
A world without God in fact 
would be either chaos or death. An 
orderly world is not possible apart from 
mind and a mind commensurate with so 
vast a problem. To admit that mind is 
to admit God. But the world can be 
without God even if God exists. Practi- 
cally this state is nearly as bad as the 



2 God the Father 

other, though not quite, for even those 
who have "no hope " and are "without 
God in the world " (Eph. ii. 12) are near 
God if they only knew it, for " he is not 
far from each one of us " (Acts xvii. 27). 

Hope for a Godless World 

For if God exists, he can be found. 
Though our search for him be not suc- 
cessful as we grope in the dark, if haply 
we may feel after him and find him, still 
we need not despair. Some point of 
contact may be found between us and 
God that may, when discovered, open 
the door of heaven, as Helen Keller was 
led by touch to God. But atheism is 
essentially pessimistic and so Paul cor- 
rectly said that those who have not God 
have no hope. The reflex influence of 
one's belief in God cannot be overesti- 
mated. What one thinks about God 
determines his theology, his philosophy, 
his ethical views, his conduct. The 
ground of hope for a world without God 



Modern Ideas about God 3 

is that the Father seeks to manifest him- 
self to men. This is the positive word 
that Christ has for men, this is the main- 
spring in Christian missions, this is the 
crown of human destiny, to be found of 
God. 

Why the World was Without a Knowl- 
edge of God 

If the evolutionary view of the world's 
origin be correct, it does not follow that 
originally men did not have adequate 
knowledge of God. Certainly the Scrip- 
tures teach original knowledge of God 
and many scientists find much to confirm 
it. In the most primitive and savage of 
present peoples some knowledge of a 
superior being is preserved with hints of 
better knowledge in other days. Names 
of God occur in all parts of the earth and 
memory of better days exists. It is true 
that, while Christianity is God seeking 
man, heathenism is man seeking God, — 
true in a sense only, however. Heathen- 



4 God the Father 

ism is much more a distinct departure 
from God than it is a groping after the 
unknown God on the part of a few. 
Certainly the fall of man after reaching 
the image of God is possible. We wit- 
ness human degradation in lives around 
us. Progress in arts and sciences does 
not measure progress in goodness. There 
is a strange persistence, if not increase, of 
evil through the centuries where the re- 
straint of fear of God does not abide. 
The facts of human nature do not justify 
us in saying that sin is merely the rem- 
nant of the animal nature brought on 
from our animal ancestry. Sin is far 
more of the spirit than of the flesh. It 
is an easy way of shirking responsibility 
for wrongdoing to charge it to our ani- 
mal nature. Evolution as an agent fails 
to explain the origin of man. Evolution 
as God's method of working can offer an 
adequate explanation of man's history. 

The problem of the origin of evil and 
so of man's alienation from God is the 



Modern Ideas about God 5 

most difficult in theology, so difficult in 
fact that some who believe in God deny 
the existence of sin. But this again is to 
win serenity of spirit at the cost of the 
evidence of the senses. We are helpless 
to speak a sure word on this subject if we 
decline to admit the existence of Satan 
who threw man down from his pedestal 
and won men away from the worship of 
God. The chief end of man is to know 
God and to be like him. It is ruin 
enough to satisfy any devil if he could 
thwart the true destiny of men. The 
three ultimate realities are God, self, the 
world ; and a recent writer has well said 
that science works from the point of view 
of the world, philosophy from that of 
self, and theology from that of God. 
Each of these great methods has its place 
and value, but surely the supreme value 
belongs to theology if it can really gain 
the standpoint of God. To see man as 
God sees him would be theology indeed, 
and not philosophy under the garb of 



6 God the Father 

theology. As God looks upon man and 
man's sin, what does he see ? He sees 
the truth and all the truth. " Can man 
by searching find out God ?" 

What the World now Thinks about God 

One of the worst heretics is the man 
who is afraid that his views may be wrong 
and is afraid to investigate the facts. 
Cowardice before facts is pitiable. Re- 
pression of the intellect as to religious 
problems has its necessary reaction in 
scepticism. The victory for individual 
opinion won by Luther against the tyr- 
anny of Roman Catholic stifling of the 
mind was bound to lead to defiant atheism. 
The pendulum will swing its course. 
But better this than the blight of medi- 
aeval authority over the human mind, for 
the facts of the universe are open to all. 
The atheist has had his say and he speaks 
largely to an unsympathetic audience at 
present. The blatant infidel has a coterie 
of followers here and there among the 



Modern Ideas about God 7 

openly wicked, but not among the real 
men of culture. Materialism is no longer 
a word with which to frighten the fol- 
lowers of God. Haeckel has only a small 
following among true scientists. Science 
has won its place against an intolerant 
theology and has also realized its helpless- 
ness to explain the universe without God. 
Science cannot tell what " life " is nor 
consciousness nor ethics. The retreat 
to agnosticism is no longer formidable. 
Even Sir Leslie Stephen cannot revive it. 
This essentially apologetic position has 
been obliged to concede a Force behind 
the world of matter, grudgingly admit- 
ting the failure of materialism though 
unwilling to affirm the personality of this 
Force. But the hesitation of Spencer is 
passing into the positive affirmation of 
Lord Kelvin, who openly asserts that sci- 
ence has a definite message in behalf of 
the existence of God. The best scientific 
and religious spirit of our time is seeking 
a higher unity in the realm of spirit in 



8 God the Father 

the common acknowledgment of God as 
Creator and Lord of all. The subtle pan- 
theism of Spinoza reappears in the still 
popular monism. But one cannot think 
that this is the ultimate philosophy of man 
nor the true explanation of the world as 
it is, any more than the idealism of 
Hegel. Our time has passed from the 
cold deism of the eighteenth century 
with its absentee God. 

The spiritual interpretation of the uni- 
verse holds the field once more. The 
doctrine of the immanence of God is more 
clearly perceived in our day than ever, 

/ but needs to be reinforced by the parallel 
truth of the transcendence of God. In 
a word the modern mind is open to faith 
in God. Evolution, instead of ruling God 
out of the world, has restored him to his 
true place in the minds of scientific men. 

f The return of George J. Romanes and 
John Fiske to belief in a personal God 
is symptomatic of the age. The modern 
world is not so patient with mediaeval the- 



Modern Ideas about God 9 

ological distinctions, but is deeply im- 
pressed with the idea of the Fatherhood 
of God. The historic Christ fills the 
horizon of modern scholarship and that 
scholarship is reacting to the admission 
that he is the eternal Christ, the Son of 
God. The counter movement of Ritsch- 
lianism is impatient with the historic 
realities and cares most for the ideas 
gathered up into Christianity. The great 
controversy of our time is taking shape 
around the Person of Christ, whether in 
truth he were in fact and essence the Son 
of God, God in nature, or merely so ac- 
cepted by those who elevated him by 
faith to the position of deity. The out- 
come cannot be doubted, but meanwhile 
many will be led into the bog of Ritsch- 
lianism, the most subtle apologetic of all 
time for holding on to the form and sur- 
rendering the substance of Christianity. 
The Holy Spirit in his work in the pres- 
ent age is apprehended in a new and vital 
sense. Judaism itself accents still the fact 



io God the Father 

of God and that much of truth even Mo- 
hammedanism proclaims. In fact God 
is the central fact of human thinking, 
and this fact was never more clearly 
recognized than now. The theologies 
of all time are two — one with God as the 
center, the other with man as the center. 
Even now with all the new interest in 
man the God-centered theology is dom- 
inant. Some systems still betray a certain 
"horror del" but the modern mind as a 
whole uncovers itself before the idea of 
God. 

Has God a Clear Word about Himself 

It is freely granted that God cannot be 
defined. The saying is eminently true : 
" Le Dieu defini est le dieu fini." The 
infinite God cannot be grasped by the 
human mind either by inquiry or by rev- 
elation. It is impossible for God fully 
to manifest himself to men, but this fact 
does not mean that God cannot at all re- 
veal himself to some men. Plato went 



Modern Ideas about God n 

as far as the unaided human intellect can 
go in its speculation about God, but he 
gave up and hoped for more light. " We 
will wait," said he, "for one, be it God 
or God-inspired man, to teach us our re- 
ligious duties and to take away the dark- 
ness from our eyes." If evolution stops 
short of opening men's eyes to God, can 
revelation sufficiently remove scales from 
the eyes of the heart for God to be seen ? 
Our day has an answer that steadies many 
hearts when it points and appeals to the 
consciousness of the individual Christian 
as a sure anchor in a time of cold criti- 
cism and harassing doubts about the Bible 
itself. There is force in this appeal that 
God shows himself to the humble heart 
that seeks him in trust. And yet every- 
thing must not be made to rest on the ex- 
perimental argument, for the Moham- 
medan and the Buddhist may make a 
similar appeal. We still need the appeal 
to the life as shown in the outward ex- 
pression of the inward experience. We 



12 God the Father 

still need the argument from design in 
nature, now greatly reinforced by evolu- 
tion. We still need the Word of God, 
the Scriptures, historical and human, col- 
ored by time and circumstance, and yet 
speaking a new and growing and lumi- 
nous and illuminating message from God 
himself about himself. 

God reveals himself not all at once, 
but slowly, now one attribute, now an- 
other, the God of history and God in his- 
tory. Even in Homer Zeus is called 
pater (father) and Jupiter among the Ro- 
mans is the same word and idea. But 
God the Father was lost in an Olympus 
of contending gods and goddesses. If 
God the Father was to be known by men, 
there was need of a clear word of reas- 
surance from him. The distinctive mes- 
sage of Christianity is just at this point. 
It claims that Jesus as God is able to re- 
veal God to men as never before known. 
It is not enough to listen to the voice of 
nature that in silent grandeur points us to 



Modern Ideas about God 13 

God. It is not enough to hearken to the 
heaven-born aspirations that cry out after 
God nor the lofty speculations of the 
reason about God. Better than these is 
the sure word of prophecy in the Scrip- 
tures, a lamp shining in a dark place. But 
best of all is Jesus Christ himself who 
claims to bring God to men. He comes 
with the approval of the Father himself : 
" This is my beloved son, in whom I am 
well pleased ; hear ye him " (Matthew 
xvii. 5). What has the Son to say about 
the Father ? We would see Jesus for his 
own sake, but for more, wonderful as 
that is. He bears a message from the 
Father and is the image of the Father. 
In the Son then we may study the Father 
with reverence and fear. In this book 
we shall "hear " the Son on this greatest 
of all themes, about his Father and our 
Father. 



CHAPTER II 

The Old Testament Idea of God the 
Basis of Jesus Teaching, 

" Ye search the Scriptures because ye think that in them 
ye have eternal life ; and these are they which bear witness 
of me " (John v. 39). 

JESUS does not set forth a new 
divinity. He was not open to the 
specious charge laid against Soc- 
rates. 

The Attitude of Jesus toward the Old 
Testament 

On this point as elsewhere the Master 
rested his teaching concerning God the 
14 



Basis of Jesus Teaching 15 

Father on the Old Testament revelation. 
He does not hesitate to appeal to the 
Old Testament for a summary of duty to 
God and man under two commandments. 
" The first is, ' Hear, O Israel ; The Lord 
our God, the Lord is one ; and thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
thy mind, and with all thy strength/ 
The second is this, ' Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself/ There is none 
other commandment greater than these " 
(Mark xii. 29-31). In fact Jesus often 
chided the teachers of the time with ig- 
norance of the Scriptures which they 
professed to teach (John v. 39), with 
ignorance of "the power of God" also 
(Matthew xxii. 29), and in particular with 
ignorance of the relation between the 
Messiah as the son of David and the 
Father (Matthew xxii. 42-45). So it is 
not a new God, but new light on 
the God of Israel that Jesus comes to 
present. It is just because he has a fresh 



1 6 God the Father 

and helpful message, a necessary word, 
about the God of the Old Testament 
that he speaks at all. " I came out from 
the Father and am come into the world " 
(John xvi. 28). " O righteous Father, 
the world knew thee not, but I knew 
thee ; and these knew that thou didst 
send me ; and I made known unto them 
thy name, and will make it known " 
(John xvii. 25 f.). Jesus here states the 
high purpose of his coming to earth, to 
manifest to men anew the God already 
known in part and, alas, forgotten in fact. 

The Progressive Character of Old Testa- 
ment Teaching about God 

It was not to be expected that God 
would manifest himself fully at first. 
The Old Testament purports to be a 
faithful record of God's dealing with the 
race through a chosen people in getting 
them ready for the coming of his Son, 
the Messiah, who was to bring salvation 
to the lost. This view is here accepted 



Basis of Jesus Teaching 17 

as against the theory which makes the 
Old Testament merely a retrospect on the 
part of dreamers and idealists of Israel 
who wished to incite the people to better 
things by idealized and even fictitious 
pictures of the past that would natter the 
nation's vanity and stimulate their hope. 
The acknowledgment that God had a 
definite, consistent and permanent pur- 
pose in this revelation does not preclude 
the freest and the fullest historical devel- 
opment. But the initiative and the 
control are placed with God in fact as 
well as in representation. In no other 
way can the integrity and value of the 
Old Testament be preserved ; only thus 
can any really adequate explanation of 
the facts of Israelitish history be offered. 
Those who follow the other line of ex- 
planation do not hesitate to disregard the 
Old Testament facts that are inconsistent 
with the theory assumed to be true, a 
favorite method with dogmatic theolo- 
gians of all shades of belief. If we may 

B 



1 8 God the Father 

rearrange and set aside the facts in Israel- 
itish history, we are free to adopt any 
theory that we please. It is time to 
speak a good word for the Old Testa- 
ment, for it will survive the present 
storm. Jesus did not hesitate to use and 
appeal to the Old Testament. It seems 
needless to say that there is no polytheism 
in the Old Testament teaching, though 
much of it is found in the practice of 
the people. The Israelites are not alone 
in history as examples of those who knew 
and did not. The great lesson of Israel- 
itish history is the lesson of monotheism. 
When they would not listen to prophetic 
teaching, they were turned over to the 
Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian rule. 
The exile burned the lesson into their 
very blood. 

What is the Old Testament Teaching about 
God the Father 

The God of Israel becomes the God 
of the nations under prophetic teaching. 



Basis of Jesus Teaching 19 

The dominant notes of the Old Testa- 
ment are the reality, the singleness, the 
power, the glory, the jealous love of 
God. Almost every act is represented 
as done in reference to God. The Old 
Testament saint walked " before God," 
"with God." He sinned "against 
God/' " against the Lord." In history, 
prophecy, and psalm " the eternal God," 
"the most high God," "the God of 
heaven," " the holy God," " the God of 
hosts," "the Lord God of hosts," "the 
Lord of hosts," "the mighty God," 
" the Lord God of the fathers " is pre- 
sented with terrible directness and awe- 
inspiring vividness. The supremacy and 
glory of God and the weakness of man 
stand out strongly in the Old Testament. 
Not often is God called "Father" in 
the Old Testament, and yet the fact and 
the idea are both present. In Jeremiah 
xxxi. 9, Jehovah says : " For I am a 
father to Israel, and Ephraim is my first- 
born." Likewise in Hosea xi. 1, Israel 



20 God the Father 

is called "my son" by Jehovah. All 
this is in the narrow sense of Father 
clearly as maintaining a peculiar relation 
to the people of his choice. In Malachi 
ii. 10, we read : " Have we not all one 
Father ? Hath not our God created us ? " 
Here the wider sense of " Father " is 
apparently applied to God, not merely as 
spiritual father of a peculiar people, but 
as creator of all men. However it is 
possible that even here the covenant idea 
dominates. In the Psalms we meet with 
the character of God as Father. So 
Psalm lxviii. 5 : "A father of the father- 
less, and a judge of widows, is God in 
his holy habitation.' ' In Psalm ciii. 
13 we read : " Like as a father pitieth 
his children, so Jehovah pitieth them that 
fear him." Clearly then the Old Testa- 
ment has the basis for the teaching of the 
Son concerning his Father. The Old 
Testament has many names for God, as 
El, Elohim, Shaddai, El-Shaddai, El- 
Ely on, Jehovah. But it also has the 



Basis of Jesus Teaching 21 

name of Father, possibly in the general 
sense of creator and certainly in the par- 
ticular sense of spiritual relationship to 
those who are thus bound to him by 
covenant ties. 

The Character of God in the Old Testament 

He is spirit and not matter. Many an- 
thropomorphic expressions are used in 
the Old Testament about the emotions 
and the deeds of God, but these clearly 
are not designed to be taken literally. 
God is absolute righteousness. He is 
holy and just and good. He is unap- 
proachable in ineffable glory, but conde- 
scends to manifest his presence through 
the Shekinah. He is thus ethical in na- 
ture, is in fact the basis of ethical concep- 
tions. He is the cause of everything, 
animate and inanimate, physical and spir- 
itual. He is a personal God, not a mere 
influence, not an idol, not the universe. 
He dwells everywhere and no one can 
escape his presence. He is " the living 



22 God the Father 

God " and manifests the reality of his 
presence in many ways that suit his pur- 
poses. He is superhuman and all power- 
ful, is Lord of nature and not the slave of 
his own laws. He can thunder at Sinai 
and he can speak at Horeb in the still 
small voice. 

God's Covenant with Men 

In nothing does the Old Testament un- 
fold God as Father so clearly as in the 
covenant of grace, prompted by his love 
for sinners, put in definite shape in the 
promise to Abraham, repeated to David, 
and expounded in prophets and psalms. 
Hear Jehovah speaking to David con- 
cerning Solomon and the kingdom : 
"He shall build me an house and I will 
establish his throne forever. I will be 
his father and he shall be my son " 
(I Chron. xvii. 12 f.). The Messianic 
promise presents God as King in his 
kingdom, the everlasting spiritual king- 
dom (II Sam. vii. 13, 16; Ps. lxxxix. 3-5). 



Basis of Jesus Teaching 23 

But God the Father in love offers his 
own Son as the priestly sacrifice for sin so 
wondrously outlined in Isaiah liii. The 
Old Testament had already told men of 
God the Father. What has Jesus more 
to say ? Will he have a fuller and a final 
word about God ? 



CHAPTER III 

Jesus the Revealer of God the Father 
to Men. 



" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father " (John 
xiv. 9). 



/^OD is a person and cannot be clearly 
i jf apprehended by abstract teaching. 
The Old Testament revelation 
was a progressive unfolding of the char- 
acter of God with a promise of a richer 
revelation in the coming Messiah. The 
law was only the pedagogue that led the 
Jews to the great Teacher. Philosophy 
had failed to satisfy the spiritual aspira- 
tions of men, as they had failed to obey 
24 



The Revealer of God 25 

the moral law. Grace and truth, which 
came by Jesus (John i. 17) brought out 
the gentler side of the divine nature. 
Grace is the distinctive word of Christi- 
anity, but Christianity is more even than 
grace. 

The hove of the Father Sends the Son 

Behind the work and mission of Christ 
stands revealed in Christ the love of God, 
stated in the words of Jesus himself in 
all probability (though possibly the words 
of the evangelist John): "For God so 
loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
on him should not perish, but have eter- 
nal life " (John iii. 16). So then Jesus 
himself is the supreme proof of the love 
of the Father for the world. The testi- 
mony of the Gospel of John is here ap- 
pealed to and will be used constantly on 
a par with that of the Synoptic Gospels. 
It is well known that some critics are un- 
willing to admit the historical character 



26 God the Father 

of the sayings of Jesus in John's Gospel 
who do admit those in the Synoptic Gos- 
pels. This is not the place to discuss that 
question, but ample grounds justify the 
use of all four Gospels as competent 
witnesses to the words of Jesus in histor- 
ical exegesis, but with due perspec- 
tive and proper apprehension of the 
relation of the Gospels to each other. 
Clearly then the motive of Christ's life 
is to fulfil the high mission of the 
Father in sending him to men. In 
fact the Master explicitly and repeat- 
edly claims to voice the will of the Father. 
" We speak that which we know, and 
bear witness of that which we have seen " 
(John iii. 11). This he said to Nicode- 
mus in justification of his right to teach 
the doctrine of the spiritual birth at which 
Nicodemus stumbled. In a summary of 
his teaching spoken at the very end and 
given in John xii. 44-50 Jesus closes 
thus : " For I spake not from myself ; 
but the Father that sent me, he hath given 



The Revealer of God 27 

me a commandment what I should say, 
and what I should speak. And I know 
that his commandment is life eternal ; the 
things therefore which I speak, even as 
the Father hath said unto me, so I speak." 
In the synagogue at Capernaum Jesus 
distinctly claims that God has sent him 
to be the Messiah according to the 
prophecy of Isaiah (Luke iv. 18 f.). 

Jesus Qualified to Reveal the Father 

So Christ claimed and so he is. On 
the human side he was devoutly pious, 
had the clearest knowledge of the Old 
Testament teaching of God, and lived a 
life of close communion with the Father. 
But he needed more than this if he was 
to give the world the full and final reve- 
lation of God. A mere man could tell 
of God's dealings with him and others 
like him and could disclose the aspects 
of God's character into which he had 
gained insight by study, by communion 
with God, and by revelation from God. 



28 God the Father 

But no mere man could manifest God to 
men in his eternal, absolute, and univer- 
sal relations to men and at the same time 
bring him home to the hearts of men as 
a real person and as the loving and mighty 
Father. It is not strange, therefore, to 
find the evangelist John, who was the 
beloved disciple and who caught best the 
true character of Christ, saying of him : 
" And we beheld his glory, glory as of 
the only begotten from the Father' ' 
(John i. 14). This may be an allusion to 
the transfiguration scene, but John was 
no Docetic Gnostic, for he says also : 
"That which we have heard, that which 
we have seen with our eyes, that which 
we beheld, and our hands handled, con- 
cerning the Word of life . . . de- 
clare we unto you " (I John i. If.). 

But this is not all. John makes the 
definite assertion of the pre-existence of 
the Word with the Father (John i. 1), 
" the Word was with God." This coex- 
istence with the Father by the Word was 



The Revealer of God 29 

eternal also, "in the beginning/ ' No 
ideal pre-existence in the mind of the 
Father will satisfy the demands of this 
language nor the words of Jesus himself 
in John ix. 58 : " Before Abraham was, 
I am." The term Word (Logos) is used 
in no mere philosophical sense either 
Platonic or Philonian, for "the Word 
became flesh, and dwelt among us " 
(John i. 14). Moreover, John has in 
mind the very point under discussion and 
speaks pointedly on it when he says : 
" No man hath seen God at any time : 
the only begotten Son, which is in the 
bosom of the Father, he hath declared 
him" (John i. 18). The best ancient 
documents here read " God only begot- 
ten " instead of " the only begotten Son," 
which would be a direct statement of the 
essential Godhead of Jesus. But what- 
ever be the true reading John expressly 
asserts that " the Word was God " (John 
i. 1), and " the Word became flesh ' ' (John 
i. 14). The Son " is in the bosom of the 



30 God the Father 

Father," John says, signifying an eternal 
relationship. Hence he is fully able to 
manifest the Father to men. He is the 
Word of God and so " hath declared 
him " to men. The word rendered de- 
clare is in root our very word exegesis. 
In measured phrase, therefore, John 
asserts the eternal pre-existence of the 
Word, the existence of the Word with 
God, the identity of this Word with God, 
an identity not in person, but in essence 
and character for he is " in the bosom of 
the Father "and "hath declared him" 
when he " became flesh." 

But it is not in John's Gospel alone 
that Jesus is thus presented as God. 
Matthew expressly explains the prophecy 
about the name Immanuel as meaning 
" God with us " (Matt. i. 23), and this 
not in a providential but a personal sense. 
In the temptations of Jesus Satan ad- 
dressed him as "a Son of God" (no ar- 
ticle with " Son " in the Greek, but with 
" God"). He was not willing to admit 



The Revealer of God 31 

the full force of the testimony of the 
Father at the baptism when he called him 
" My beloved Son " (Mark i. 11). Jesus 
accepted worship from the disciples as 
the Son of God (Matt. xiv. 33), and this 
was in not simply a "religious value " 
sense, whatever the disciples at this time 
believed about Jesus, for they "wor- 
shipped " him. 

The Claim of Jesus about his Message con- 
cerning the Father 

Nothing is plainer than the high claims 
made by Jesus concerning his knowledge 
of the Father. In the next chapter the 
precise relation between the Father and 
the Son will be discussed at length. Just 
here we may properly present what the 
Master has to say about his own message. 
To the woman of Samaria at Jacob's well 
he said : " If thou knewest the gift of 
God, and who it is that saith to thee, 
Give me to drink ; thou wouldst have 
asked of him, and he would have given 



32 God the Father 

thee living water " (John iv. 10). To 
the disciples, astonished that he did not 
eat the food which they had brought, he 
replied : " My meat is to do the will of 
him that sent me, and to accomplish his 
work " (John iv. 34). When the Phari- 
sees from Jerusalem reasoned in their 
hearts that he was a blasphemer, Jesus 
said : " But that ye may know that the 
Son of man hath power on earth to for- 
give sins (he saith to the sick of the palsy), 
I say unto thee, Arise, take up thy bed, 
and go unto thy house " (Mark ii. 10 f.). 
But not power alone did Jesus claim, 
power that put him on a level with the 
Father. Besides power he distinctly 
avows such knowledge of the Father as 
no one else possessed : " All things have 
been delivered unto me of my Father : 
and no one knoweth the Son, save the 
Father: neither doth any know the 
Father, save the Son, and he to whomso- 
ever the Son willeth to reveal him " 
(Matt. xi. 27). Here the Son expressly 



The Revealer of God 33 

asserts that the only way to know the 
Father is through the Son. The will of 
the Son decides to whom he will reveal 
the Father. This high claim is intolerant 
of rivalry. Not Zoroaster, not Buddha, 
not Confucius, not Mahomet, but Jesus 
alone reveals the Father to men. It is 
impossible to smooth down this absolute 
claim, for it is supported by the whole 
tenor of the teaching of Jesus, especially 
in the Gospel of John. These words in 
Matthew, repeated also at a later time 
(see Luke x. 22), reinforce the historical 
reality of the Johannine teaching. Nei- 
ther the Unitarian nor the Ritschlian 
view of Jesus is consonant with the 
claims of equality with God here made 
by Christ. So the Lord Jesus urges 
men, in order to come to knowledge of 
the Father, to come to himself. " Come 
unto me," says he, " take my yoke upon 
you, and learn of me " (Matt. xi. 28 f.). 
In fact, Jesus refuses recognition in 
heaven before the Father to those who 



34 God the Father 

deny the Son here. " Every one there- 
fore who shall confess me before men, 
him will I also confess before my Father 
which is in heaven. But whosoever shall 
deny me before men, him will I also 
deny before my Father which is in 
heaven " (Matt. x. 32 f.). No more di- 
vine assumption of authority in the sphere 
of the spiritual life is possible than this. 
The way to the Father's presence is by 
the approval of the Son. This vital iden- 
tity between the Father and the Son Je- 
sus announced to the Galilean multitude 
in the synagogue at Capernaum at the 
climax of the Galilean ministry, and the 
announcement repelled the unspiritual 
populace who revolted at the spiritual 
conception of the Messiah. Jesus claimed 
to be "the true bread of God" (Johnvi. 
32 f.), "the true bread out of heaven/' 
When they murmured, Jesus replied : 
" No one can come to me, except the 
Father which sent me draw him " (John 
vi. 44), insisting again that he alone had 



The Revealer of God 35 

" seen the Father " (John vi. 46). As 
they grew angry, Jesus went still further : 
" As the living Father sent me, and I live 
because of the Father : so he that eateth 
me, he also shall live because of me " 
(John vi. 57). As no one can come to 
the Father except by the Son, so no one 
can come to the Son " except it be given 
unto him of the Father " (John vi. 65). 
It is no wonder that under such a severe 
sifting the multitude melted away and 
left Jesus in the synagogue with the 
twelve. But the Father in heaven had 
revealed to Simon Peter that Jesus was 
the Messiah as he now and afterwards 
confessed (Matt. xvi. 16 f.). 

If Jesus claimed to bear witness of the 
Father, he contended also that to reject 
him was displeasing to the Father, "He 
that rejecteth me rejecteth him that sent 
me " (Luke x. 16). If he bore witness 
of the Father, so the Father bore wit- 
ness of him. " And the Father which 
sent me, he hath borne witness of me " 



36 God the Father 

(John v. 37). At the baptism (Matt. iii. 
11), the Father spoke approval of his 
mission. So was it also at the transfigura- 
tion (Mark ix. 7) and, when the Greeks 
came to him, the Father spoke audible 
cheer (John xii. 28). To his enemies 
therefore Jesus boldly claimed : "I am 
not alone, but I and the Father that sent 
me " (John viii. 16). When they sneer- 
ingly asked him, " Where is thy Father ? " 
his reply was ready : " Ye know neither 
me nor my Father : if ye knew me, ye 
would know my Father also " (John viii. 
19). 

It is no wonder then that Jesus ex- 
presses surprise at the dulness of Thomas, 
saying : "I am the way, and the truth, 
and the life : no one cometh unto the 
Father, but by me. If ye had known 
me, ye would have known my Father 
also : from henceforth ye know him, and 
have seen him" (John xiv. 6 f.). The 
very climax of the self-revelation of the 
Father in the Son, as claimed by Christ, 



The Revealer of God 37 

comes in his reply to Philip's sceptical 
appeal that he "shew us the Father." 
Hear the earnest plea of Jesus : " Have I 
been so long time with you, and dost 
thou not know me, Philip ? He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father ; how 
sayest thou, Show us the Father ? Be- 
lievest thou not that I am in the Father, 
and the Father in me ? " (John xiv. 9 f.). 
In these words the Son expresses the core 
of the great truth that he is the Revealer 
to men of God the Father. Henceforth 
men are without excuse who do not 
know the Father, for he has so expressed 
himself in the Son that all men may see 
and know. The Father and the Son 
really abide in the believer : " We will 
come and make our abode with him " 
(John xiv. 23). 

The Character of God according to the 
Message of the Son 

If Jesus is so well qualified to tell men 
the truth about God, as the Evangelists 



38 God the Father 

say and as he himself says, what then is his 
message ? What has he to say ? We now 
come to the heart of the subject of this 
book. The succeeding chapters aim to 
discuss in detail the various aspects of the 
message of Jesus concerning God the 
Father. But just here let us get a fore- 
cast of the whole treatment by a brief 
glance at the general features of the sub- 
ject. 

The first positive word that the Master 
spoke concerning the character of the 
Father, as given in the Gospels, is this : 
" God is a Spirit " or perhaps better 
"God is spirit" (John iv. 24). This 
clear word he spoke to the poor Samari- 
tan woman who sought to inveigle the 
Saviour into a discussion of the theolog- 
ical controversy between the Jews and 
the Samaritans as to the true place of 
worship, whether Jerusalem or Gerizim. 
" They that worship him must worship 
in spirit and truth," " neither in this 
mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye wor- 



The Revealer of God 39 

ship the Father," he said. These lumi- 
nous words stand out in bold relief against 
the narrow and unspiritual conception of 
both Jew and Gentile. They remain 
yet the last and highest message about 
the nature of God. The world to-day, 
after dallying with materialism, is coming 
back to just this conception, that spirit is 
before matter, that life is spirit, and that 
the life of the world is God. As spirit 
God must be approached by the spirit. 
This then is the essence of worship, and 
not the form nor the place. The reality 
of worship rises above sacrament, ritual, 
place, as God is eternal spirit. 

Another distinctive word that Jesus 
uses of God is Father. The word is in 
the Old Testament and is applied to God, 
but it remained for the Son to familiarize 
men with the term and the idea. It is on 
the lips of Jesus at every turn. "The 
Father," he says, or "My Father," 
"your Father," "our Father," or simply 
" Father," " Abba, Father. ' ' There is a 



4<3 God the Father 

difference in the relations expressed by 
these terms which will be brought out 
later. But he taught his disciples to say 
" Our Father " when they prayed (Matt. 
vi. 9). He taught the Fatherhood of 
God in a real and blessed sense. He 
made men feel that God is near and 
watches over them. 

One other general idea of God Jesus 
presented. He insisted on the absolute 
goodness of God. The eager young 
ruler, who lightly addressed Jesus as 
"good Master/' was quickly reminded 
that " none is good save one, even God " 
(Luke xviii. 19). This he did not to dis- 
claim his own divinity, but to caution the 
young man and to pierce his idea of God 
and Christ. This is a needed lesson for 
all times. God is good. God is good 
to us, always good to us. 

The power of God is without meas- 
ure, Jesus taught. " All things are pos- 
sible with God " (Mark x. 27). His dis- 
ciples were distressed at the hard teaching 



The Revealer of God 41 

of Jesus about the rich. If the rich had 
such a difficult task, who then can be 
saved ? The difficulty is real, and the 
Master did not minimize it. He rather 
admitted the hopelessness of the situation 
from the point of view of men. But 
there is a higher way of seeing things. 
"With God all things are possible" 
(Matt. xix. 26). 

Once more God is the God of the liv- 
ing, says Jesus. " God is not the God 
of the dead, but of the living" (Matt, 
xxii. 32). He is the living God himself 
and is the God of the living. This is an 
argument to show that the dead rise again, 
but it is also a definite message to the ef- 
fect that God is living. In a word then, 
as Jesus speaks the message, God is the 
living God, God is spirit, God is good, 
God is the Father, God is all powerful, 
and God loves the world. Spiritual life, 
absolute holiness, endless power, and per- 
fect love are the attributes that distin- 
guish him that Jesus called and taught 



42 God the Father 

us to call Father. To love God, to trust 
God, to walk with God, to find God 
here, to go to God at last through the 
portal of death — this is eternal life, this 
is the true destiny of man. 

Jesus in his prayer before his passion 
says : " And this is life eternal, that they 
should know thee, the only true God, 
and him whom thou didst send, even 
Jesus Christ " (John xvii. 3). He is fully 
conscious of the solemnity of his relation 
to men as the Revealer of the Father. 
He has not been able to make all men 
see Him, but he has helped the disciples 
to that end : " I manifested thy name 
unto the men whom thou gavest me out 
of the world " (John xvii. 6). He has 
this consolation then as he enters the 
shadow of the cross. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Relation of the Father to the 
Son. 

" Thou art my beloved Son ; in thee I am well pleased." 
Luke iii. 22. The Father to the Son. 

" For thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." 
John xvii. 24. The Son to the Father. 

rHE Evangelist John opens his 
Gospel with the statement in 
effect that the Logos eternally 
coexisted with God and was God. He 
continues in i. 18 and calls him " the only 
begotten Son, which is in the bosom of 
the Father." " And the Word became 
flesh and dwelt among us " (John i. 14). 

43 



44 God the Father 

The Unique Relation between the Father 
and the Son 
This is most assuredly true. Jesus is 
called "the only begotten Son" also in 
John iii. 16, 18, where it is not clear 
whether we have the words of Jesus 
himself or the witness of the Evangelist. 
The angel Gabriel foretold to Mary that 
her Son should " be called the Son of 
the Most High " (Luke i. 32) and that 
the Lord God should " give unto him 
the throne of his father David/' and " of 
his kingdom there should be no end " 
(Luke i. 32 f.). And to Mary's protest 
he replied : " The holy thing which is 
begotten shall be called the Son of God " 
(Luke i. 35). Thus both the human 
nature and the divine nature of the Christ 
are asserted by John the evangelist in 
retrospect and by the angel Gabriel in 
prophecy. Did Jesus himself realize 
such a peculiar relationship toward both 
God and men? In particular was he 
conscious of his Messianic mission and 



The Son 45 

of a peculiar connection with God the 
Father ? In seeking to learn the relation 
of the Father to the Son we are com- 
pelled to use the words of Jesus about 
that relation. In three instances alone 
do we have the direct words of the 
Father about the Son, but these are full 
of significance and strongly reinforce 
what the Son affirms. As Jesus entered 
upon his public ministry and came up 
out of the baptismal water, the Father 
spoke in audible voice, audible to the Son 
certainly, and said : " Thou art my be- 
loved Son : in thee I am well pleased " 
(Mark i. 11). Here sonship of a special 
character is distinctly asserted by the 
Father. The words " my beloved " 
mark him off from other " sons of God " 
and the " good pleasure " is more abso- 
lute than that expressed about believers 
merely (Luke ii. 14) although the same 
word is used in both cases. 

This testimony was at the introduction 
of the Messiah to his work. In the last 



46 God the Father 

year of the public ministry, when the 
Galilean ministry, like the earlier Judean, 
had resulted in the alienation of the peo- 
ple through jealousy of the leaders and 
lack of spiritual perception among the 
masses, the Saviour is facing his death. 
On the transfiguration mount the Father 
once more calls him " my beloved Son" 
(Matt. xvii. 5). In the last week of 
Christ's public work the message of the 
Greeks greatly agitates the heart of 
Jesus. They will come to him only by 
his death. He has real agony before 
Gethsemane and cries out : " Father, 
save me from this hour." But he in- 
stantly adds : " Father, glorify thy 
name." The Father heard this appeal 
and replied in audible voice understood 
by him though not clearly by the multi- 
tude : " I have both glorified it, and will 
glorify it again " (John xii. 27 f.). For 
the rest we must first see the Father 
through the Son's person and message. 
Thus we can gain a point of view 



The Son 47 

by which we may form some adequate 
conception of the interrelation that 
subsists between the Father and the 
Son. 

Jesus early became conscious that he 
was the Son of God in a special way. 
How soon the Messianic consciousness 
dawned in his mind we do not know, nor 
how fully he at first grasped the great 
fact in his life. That he grew " in favor 
with God and men " (Luke ii. 52) we do 
know. When first " the boy Jesus " 
emerges out of the obscurity of the 
silent years at Nazareth, the boy of 
twelve left in Jerusalem by Joseph and 
Mary, he exhibits knowledge of his 
unique position in the world. " Knew 
ye not that I must be in my Father's 
house?" he pleaded, when they ex- 
pressed surprise at finding him there. 
He describes God as " my Father, " 
whether we read " house" or "busi- 
ness." He has already come into the 
consciousness of his real self. By " my 



48 God the Father 

Father" he meant more than by "our 
Father." 

The words " my Father " are often on 
his lips in after years. The first time 
that the Messiah appears in Jerusalem 
after his baptism, he boldly asserts 
authority over the temple and drives the 
money changers and market venders 
out. "Make not," said he, "my 
Father's house a house of merchandise" 
(John ii. 16). It was his Father's house 
in a sense that was not true of mere 
worshipers of God. When the Jews in 
Jerusalem find fault with Jesus for having 
healed the impotent man on the Sabbath 
day, he says : " My Father worketh 
even until now, and I work " (John v. 
17). The effect of this claim was in- 
stantaneous. "The Jews sought the 
more to kill him, because he not only 
broke the Sabbath, but also called God 
his own Father, making himself equal 
with God " (John v. 18). It will not do 
to say that the Jews here misunderstood 



The Son 49 

the claims of Jesus as to his unique rela- 
tion to the Father, for he proceeded at 
once to prove the high claims of equality 
with the Father. It is not necessary to 
prove by further exegetical remark from 
the use of the phrase " my Father " the 
uniqueness of the relation between the 
Father and the Son. Let a few quota- 
tions suffice. "All things have been 
delivered unto me of my Father " (Matt. 
xi. 27) ; " My Father giveth you the 
true bread out of heaven " (John vi. 32) ; 
" For flesh and blood hath not revealed it 
unto thee, but my Father who is in 
heaven' ' (Matt. xvi. 17) ; " In heaven 
their angels do always behold the face 
of my Father who is in heaven " (Matt. 
xviii. 10) ; " But I honor my Father, and 
ye dishonor me" (John viii. 49). These 
are representative sayings of Jesus in 
which he calls God " my Father." 

It is impossible to say that here Jesus 
merely claimed God as his Father in the 
same sense that any other child of God 

D 



50 God the Father 

has the right to do. To his enemies he 
said: "Ye have not known him: but I 
know him ; and if I should say I know 
him not, I shall be like you, a liar "(John 
viii. 55). He insists on this unique rela- 
tionship in the face of bitter denial. 

Often Christ speaks of God as "the 
Father.' ' This usage is almost confined 
to the Gospel of John where it is very 
common, while " my Father" is com- 
mon in all the Gospels. In John " the 
Father " is sometimes God in relation to 
his children in general, though even here 
in contrast to the Son as in John v. 23 : 
"That all may honour the Son, even as 
they honour the Father. " Usually, how- 
ever, in John's Gospel, the expression 
" the Father " in the mouth of Jesus rep- 
resents God in his relation to the Son, 
as " the Father loveth the Son " (John v. 
20), " even as the Father knoweth me 
and I know the Father" (John x. 15), 
" because I go to the Father " (John xvi. 
10). The Father and the Son are often 



The Son 51 

mentioned together in the discourses of 
Christ in the Gospel of John. The pas- 
sage in Matt. xi. 29-30 (cf. also Luke x. 
22), which is so much like the words of 
Christ in the Fourth Gospel, has likewise 
" the Father " and " the Son " in mutual 
relationship of utmost intimacy. 

Sometimes, as in prayer, Jesus says 
simply "Father.'' In Luke x. 21 he 
prays : " I thank thee, O Father, Lord of 
heaven and earth," and he goes on in the 
same verse, " yea, Father, for so it was 
well-pleasing in thy sight," though here 
the Greek has the article with the voca- 
tive. Beside the grave of Lazarus Christ 
spoke with confident trust : " Father, I 
thank thee that thou heardest me " (John 
xi. 41). In the Garden of Gethsemane 
Jesus cried out to God : " Father, if thou 
be willing" (Luke xxii. 42), "Abba, 
Father " (Mark xiv. 36) in the language 
of childhood in both Aramaic and Greek 
(with the article with each). On the 
cross he prayed : " Father, forgive them " 



52 God the Father 

(Luke xxiii. 34), a disputed passage, but 
most probably genuine. He died with 
the utterance of these words : " Father, 
into thy hands I commend my spirit " 
(Luke xxiii. 46). In a world of hypoc- 
risy and religiosity Jesus stood in lonely 
and lofty purity and sincerity. He found 
full fellowship of spirit only with the 
Father and the Holy Spirit. His heart 
beat in compassion for men and in sym- 
pathy with men, but at the same time he 
stood apart from men. His highest and 
holiest communion was with the Father 
whose only begotten Son he was. If 
this was true, more was true. 

What is the Relation between Father and 
Son in Nature 

Has the Father given to the Son in ac- 
tual being what his other children do not 
possess ? It is sometimes said that evolu- 
tion brings Christ under inevitable law 
and makes it impossible for him to differ 
in nature from other men, however far 



The Son 53 

he excels them in character. But even 
on scientific grounds Jesus is the grand 
exception in the race, unless we deny the 
records that we have about his career. 
Those who revolt at the superhuman, 
not to say supernatural, calmly brush 
aside the Gospel accounts as discredited, 
but then the supreme character remains. 
It was drawn by somebody. The story 
of the virgin birth is thrust into the limbo 
of the legendary. But what then be- 
comes of Christ? Whose Son is he? 
This very question the Master pressed 
home to his enemies after their complete 
rout on the last day of his teaching in the 
temple. If he is merely " the Son of 
David" and so merely human, "how 
then doth David in the Spirit call him 
Lord ? " (Matt. xxii. 42 f.) On the 
other hand, " If David then calleth him 
Lord " and so he is only divine, "how 
is he his son ? " (Matt. xxii. 45.) " No 
one was able to answer him a word ' ' then, 
nor can any one solve that riddle now 



54 God the Father 

who does not admit the real humanity 
and the real divinity of Jesus Christ. 
It is no mere official relation nor does 
Jesus simply have the religious value 
of God's Son. The relation is vital and 
eternal. 

It is true that Jesus urges those who 
follow him to "be one ; even as thou, 
Father, art in me, and I in thee " (John 
xvii. 20 f.), "that they may be one, even 
as we are " (John xvii. 11). But none the 
less the Son insists on a real difference 
between the relation of the Son and the 
disciples and that of the Son and the 
Father. " And now, Father, glorify thou 
me with thine own self with the glory 
which I had with thee before the world 
was " (John xvii. 5). Here he isolates 
the Father and himself apart from the 
world and before there was a world, when 
he was with the Father's "own self." 
Ideal pre-existence is inconceivable in this 
passage. We may not penetrate the mys- 
teries of the divine essence, but here 



The Son 55 

Father and Son are set apart from all the 
world in being and glory and are on a 
plane of perfect equality that is incom- 
prehensible save on the understanding 
that Jesus is in very nature the Son of 
God. It is only as we perceive this fact 
that we can give hearty respect to one 
who made such claims about himself as 
Jesus did. With this frank admission 
there is no discord when he says : " I am 
the way, and the truth, and the life : no 
one cometh unto the Father, but by me " 
(John xiv. 6). Thus he is able to "shew 
us the Father " because he is able truth- 
fully to say : "I am in the Father, and 
the Father in me " (John xiv. 11). So 
we can be brought into contact with the 
Father, " I in them and thou in me ,; 
(John xvii. 23). 

It is not surprising then to hear Jesus 
call himself " the Son of God " as he does 
a few times. This is the constant impli- 
cation of the words so often on his lips, 
" my Father," " the Father/' " the Son." 



56 God the Father 

In the early part of the ministry at the 
second visit to Jerusalem he was accused 
by the Jews of calling " God his own 
Father' ' and " making himself equal 
with God." So far from denying this 
charge he even said in defence : " The 
hour cometh, and now is, when the dead 
shall hear the voice of the Son of God; 
and they that hear shall live" (John 
v. 25). When Lazarus was at the point 
of death, Jesus boldly declared that this 
sickness was "for the glory of God, that 
the Son of God may be glorified thereby " 
(John xi. 4). But most of all, when put 
on oath by the high priest at his trial be- 
fore the Sanhedrin, Jesus asserted ex- 
pressly that he was the Son of God : "I 
adjure thee by the living God, that thou 
tell us whether thou be the Christ, the 
Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou 
hast said" (Matt. xxvi. 63 f.). Mark 
represents Jesus as saying in reply simply : 
" I am " (Mark xiv. 62). 

It seems clear from this what the Jews 



The Son 57 

understood Christ to mean by the ex- 
pression "the Son of God." At any rate 
his own teachings make clear what he 
meant to claim. In view of all that is 
true, it is rather surprising to find the 
words "the Son of God" used so little 
by the Master. Perhaps he avoided it 
partly because of possible political conse- 
quences as he usually avoided the use of 
" Messiah " for the same reason. It is 
not to be replied that Jesus claimed to be 
God only in the sense true of those who 
were given authority by God. He used 
this argument (John x. 34-36). "Is it 
not written in your law, I said, Ye are 
gods?'' in rebuttal of the charge that he 
was guilty of blasphemy, " because that 
thou, being a man, makest thyself God " 
(John x. 33). He had just said : "I and 
the Father are one " (John x. 30). He 
did not deserve the charge of blasphemy 
even if he was only a god in the lower 
sense, by no means admitting that this 
was all the truth. The term therefore 



58 God the Father 

is personal, expressing his relation to God, 
as well as official and Messianic. 

Jesus did claim his special divine Son- 
ship when it was wise or necessary, but 
he rejoiced to assert his humanity. The 
phrase " the Son of man" is ever in his 
mouth. This expression cannot be whit- 
tled down to mean merely "a man." 
It had a Messianic significance, though 
perhaps not generally so understood, and 
was pre-eminently fitting for him who 
was in every sense the ideal man, the 
representative man of all time. The very 
pregnancy of the term makes it all the 
more suitable. He used the words " the 
Son of man " not only when speaking of 
his earthly work, but when discussing his 
power and glory, as when he replied to 
the question of the high priest at the trial 
before the Sanhedrin : " Henceforth ye 
shall see the Son of man sitting at the 
right hand of power, and coming on the 
clouds of heaven " (Matt. xxvi. 64). 
There is nothing to justify us in speaking 



The Son 59 

of the divinity of Christ in distinction 
from the deity of the Father. This is a 
Ritschlian refinement foreign to the 
teaching of the Gospels. John said ex- 
pressly : " The Word was God " (John 

i. i). 

The Father and Son have an Interflow of 
Knowledge 

Jesus was a man and grew in knowl- 
edge. But he also was God and the 
Father's will and word came richly to 
him in ways not true of mere men. "For 
the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth 
him all things that himself doeth 
(John v. 20). Once more in the same 
great discourse Jesus said: "As I hear, I 
judge ; and ... I seek not mine own 
will, but the will of him that sent me " 
(John v. 30). When the hostile Jews 
marvelled at the source of his teaching, 
since he had not their scholastic training, 
Jesus said simply : " My teaching is not 
mine, but his that sent me ' ' (John vii. 



60 God the Father 

16). By the open grave of Lazarus 
Christ in calm trust looked up to God 
and said : " Father, I thank thee that 
thou heardest me " (John xi. 41), adding : 
" And I knew that thou hearest me al- 
ways." Jesus claimed to be the absolute 
teacher of righteousness by reason of his 
relation to the Father. 

And yet he had some limitations in his 
knowledge. He himself said of the day 
of his second coming : " But of that day 
or that hour knoweth no one, not even 
the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but 
the Father" (Mark xiii. 32). Why 
Christ had superhuman knowledge and 
yet was astonished at the faith of some 
and the doubt of others we cannot tell. 
The mind of Christ is part of the mys- 
tery of his person. But we may rever- 
ently assert that what he did teach was 
authoritative and final. He taught no 
error, though he did not teach every- 
thing. He is the final authority where he 
does speak, for he speaks the will of the 



The Son 61 

Father. In the darkness of the cross, 
Jesus cried out : " My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt, xxvii. 
46). Here the frown of the Father rested 
on the Son as he died for our sins ; he 
was looked on as sin indeed. How the 
Father, when one in nature with the Son, 
could thus forsake the Son we do not 
venture to discuss. 

The Father and the Son Work in Harmony 

There is no self-will in the Son toward 
the Father. He gladly claims union with 
the Father in nature, knowledge, and 
power. "The Son can do nothing of 
himself, but what he seeth the Father 
doing'' (John v. 19). And this is not 
mere imitation as earthly children copy 
the deeds of their parents. " For as the 
Father hath life in himself, even so gave 
he to the Son also to have life in himself " 
(John v. 26). With such power and rank 
the Master dares to claim for himself 
honor like that of the Father : " That all 



62 God the Father 

may honor the Son, even as they honor 
the Father. He that honoreth not the 
Son honoreth not the Father which sent 
him " (John v. 23 f.). This he said to 
the hostile Jews in Jerusalem who pro- 
tested against his " making himself equal 
with God." 

No mere man could soberly say what 
Matthew represents Christ as saying after 
the message from John the Baptist : "All 
things have been delivered unto me of 
my Father" (Matt. xi. 27). This su- 
preme authority Jesus often asserted. 
Even as he entered into the dark hours 
of the Passion Week, he walked steadilv 
on, John says, " Knowing that the Father 
had given all things into his hands " (John 
xiii. 3). After his resurrection from the 
grave, the once homeless teacher boldly 
uttered a cry of victory as he sent a band 
of disciples on a world conquest : " All 
authority hath been given unto me in 
heaven and in earth " (Matt, xxviii. 18). 
Satan had offered him power on earth for 



The Son 63 

the price of a bow of worship, but now 
the Master has power assured in heaven 
and earth. 

The Father and the Son are One in 
Character 

In the nature of the case Christ would 
say little about being as holy as God the 
Father. Once in fact when a rich young 
ruler came to him and called him " Good 
Master/' Jesus questioned his use of the 
adjective " good " in reference to himself. 
" Why callest thou me good ? None is 
good save one, even God" (Mark x. 18). 
But we do not here understand Christ to 
deny that he is good, as some say, but 
only to assert absolute goodness of God 
alone from the ruler's point of view. 
The young man doubtless did not take 
Christ to be divine, as he is in reality. 
Hence he needed care in the use of the 
word "good/' The very caution of 
Christ here serves to set in relief his own 
character. He is good as God is good. 



64 God the Father 

We also think of Jesus as the expression 
of God's goodness. In this sense God is 
as good as Jesus. This is the verdict of 
men, practically of all men. No adjec- 
tives are used to picture the life of Jesus 
in the Gospels. He himself says nothing 
about his personal character save as we 
gather it in hints and deeds. But his 
character is distinct and clear cut. If to 
see Jesus was to see the Father, then is 
Jesus like the Father in spirit and life. 
This Christ claimed for himself : "If ye 
had known me, ye would have known 
my Father also " (John xiv. 7). But the 
Father called him his " beloved Son " 
and expressed good pleasure in him 
(Matt. iii. 17). We have been treading 
on holy ground as we have sought to un- 
fold the relation between the Father and 
the Son. He joyfully confessed : " My 
Father is greater than I " (John xiv. 28). 
He is speaking of office, but they are 
one in nature, knowledge, power, and 
character. The eternal Father and the 



The Son 65 

eternal Son are also one in love for a lost 
and ruined world. 

The Apologetic of Jesus 

Perhaps a paragraph should be added 
for the purpose of calling attention to the 
great number of Christ's sayings about 
the relation between the Father and him- 
self. He speaks far more about this as- 
pect of the Father's revelation than about 
any other. There are obvious reasons 
for this fact. For one thing it was a 
necessary introduction to his right to 
speak so full and free a message from 
the Father. His high claim to peculiar 
oneness with the Father could not be 
taken on his mere statement. This Jesus 
freely admitted, though insisting that his 
words were true even if they were not 
accepted on his affirmation. In a true 
sense Christ was on the defensive before 
his enemies, and when attacked for mak- 
ing himself equal with God, he had to 
enter into extended discussion of the holy 

E 



66 God the Father 

relation subsisting between the Father 
and the Son. This is seen especially at 
the feast in Jerusalem (John v.), at the 
feast of tabernacles (John vii. 7-x. 21), 
at the feast of dedication (John x. 22- 
42). 

In the farewell discourse to the disci- 
ples in the upper room just before his 
death Christ opened his heart to them 
and spoke frankly of the Father, the 
Holy Spirit, and himself (John xii-xvii.). 
This passage in John is the holy of holies 
of the teaching of Jesus. And then be- 
sides Christ had come into the world to 
manifest the Father, to win the world 
back to the Father. It is natural there- 
fore that he should speak often of his 
own relation to the Father in the execu- 
tion of his high mission. All else is 
after the King. The great, the supreme 
message of Jesus is the revelation that he 
offers in himself of God the Father. If 
he speaks less at length about other rela- 
tions of the Father, we must remember 



The Son 67 

that in Christ God is reconciling the 
world to himself. 

The Father s Satisfaction in the Son 

We are under necessity to be cautious 
in all that we say concerning the emo- 
tions of God the Father. But he thrice 
spoke audibly his good pleasure in the 
person and work of the Son, as has already 
been shown, at the baptism, at the trans- 
figuration, and when the Greeks came to 
seek Jesus. The Son came forth from 
the Father, and went back to the Father : 
" I came out from the Father . . . 
and go unto the Father " (John xvi. 28). 
But all during his earthly ministry the 
Father was with him : " and yet I am 
not alone, because the Father is with me " 
(John xvi. 32). He never doubted the 
confidence that the Father had in him. 
When he faced his death, he calmly 
prayed : " Father, the hour is come ; 
glorify thy Son, that the Son may glor- 
ify thee " (John xvii. 2). He could give 



68 God the Father 

his disciples no greater measure of his 
love for them than the Father's love for 
him : " Even as the Father hath loved 
me, I also have loved you " (John xv. 9). 
He was doing what he did " that the 
world may know that I love the Father " 
(John xiv. 31). 

In the Garden of Gethsemane he did 
not incur the Father's displeasure, for he 
only asked that the cup pass, " Father, if 
thou be willing" (Luke xxii. 42). And 
even as on the cross the Son cried out 
that the Father had forsaken him, yet it 
was for this very purpose that the Father 
had sent him into the world. " For 
God so loved the world that he gave 
his only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth on him should not perish, but 
have eternal life " (John iii. 16). The 
heart of Christ was torn with grief at the 
thought of separation from his disciples, 
but he ventured to say that, if they really 
knew what it meant for them and for 
him that he go, they would not grieve. 



The Son 69 

" If ye loved me, ye would have rejoiced, 
because I go unto the Father " (John 
xiv. 28). Henceforth he " is in the 
bosom of the Father" (John i. 18). But 
the Father is forever nearer to us and we 
come, as Thomas did, and say to Jesus, 
"My Lord and my God " (John xx. 
28). Jesus told Mary Magdalene to say 
to the disciples for him : "I ascend unto 
my Father and your Father, and my God 
and your God " (John xx. 17). So we 
draw near to the Father, for Jesus in 
heaven is the God-man still, our Brother 
and Friend, our God and Saviour. 



CHAPTER V 

The Relation of the Father to the 
Holy Spirit. 



" And I will pray the Father and he shall give you anothe 
Comforter, that he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit 
of truth." (Johnxiv. 16). 



w 



E are not here concerned with 
metaphysical speculations. 



The Fact of the Trinity 

There is no technical discussion of the 
Trinity in the New Testament. But the 
fact is clearly revealed in various parts of 
the Scriptures. The Gospels form no 

70 



The Holy Spirit 71 

exception. If we had no knowledge of 
the Holy Spirit, the teaching of Jesus 
would make necessary a dual God. His 
own deity is indubitable. However, a 
Triune God is the manifest unfolding 
of Christ. If he reveals the Father, he 
also declares his equality with the Father. 
If he claims deity for himself, he also as- 
serts the deity of the Holy Spirit. Jesus 
does not give a detailed discussion of the 
nature of the Trinity. But the essential 
fact revealed is that God is one : " The 
Lord our God, the Lord is one " (Mark 
xii. 29). This is not a new revelation, 
for the Old Testament is uniformly 
monotheistic in teaching and Jesus here 
is quoting the Old Testament. 

But beside this cardinal fact in the 
teaching of Christ lies the other fact of 
his own deity and that of the Holy Spirit. 
We may not be able to state in scientific 
formula the idea of the Trinity. Three 
Persons in one nature may seem intan- 
gible to us. Be it so. We must dis- 



72 God the Father 

criminate sharply between the fact of the 
Trinity and theories about the Trinity. 
What Christ reveals is not a mere mo- 
dal Trinity. It is not that God manifests 
himself now as Father, now as Son, now as 
Holy Spirit. The rather all three Persons 
co-exist in the one essence and co-work in 
the salvation of men. Humility well be- 
comes us all in applying to the infinite 
Godhead the metes and bounds of our 
finite reason. Christ himself is sufficient 
guarantee for the truth that he reveals 
even if it is incomprehensible to our mind. 
He is the truth and can speak only the 
truth. We may rest in him. 

Jesus himself under the Spirit's Guidance in 
his Earthly Life 

The very birth of Jesus illustrates the 
intimate and vital union of the three 
Persons in the Godhead. The angel said 
to Mary that Jesus was to be begotten 
of the Holy Spirit : " The Holy Spirit 
shall come upon thee, and the power of 



The Holy Spirit 73 

the Most High shall overshadow thee " 
(Luke i. 35), and he is to be God's Son 
for this very reason : " Wherefore also 
the holy thing which is begotten shall 
be called the Son of God " (ibid.). At 
the baptism of Jesus likewise the Father 
audibly expressed his approval of the Son 
while the Holy Spirit appeared in bodily 
form like a dove and rested on Jesus 
(Luke iii. 22). It is not here claimed 
that this significant event explains clearly 
the relations that subsist in the Trinity, 
but only the vital reality and close con- 
nection of Father, Son, and Spirit. We 
may not say that Jesus was not under the 
guidance of the Holy Spirit before this 
time, but simply that now in a formal 
manner as he enters upon his public 
Messianic mission the Father and the 
Spirit set the seal of their approval upon 
him. 

It is beyond dispute that Jesus in his 
earthly life was under the control of the 
Holy Spirit as well as in subjection to the 



74 God the Father 

will of the Father. Jesus was led of 
the Spirit into the wilderness (Matt. iv. 1), 
and in the temptation there the Spirit was 
with him. In his first sermon at Naza- 
reth he said : " The Spirit of the Lord is 
upon me" (Luke iv. 18). He main- 
tained that he wrought his miracles by 
the Spirit of God (Matt. xii. 28), though 
evidently with no reflection on the power 
of the Father nor of his own power. 
The way in which the divine power 
worked in him in the case of the mira- 
cles was by the Spirit. We need not as- 
sert that Christ did not draw upon his own 
divine power. To do so would lay too 
much stress upon the difference between 
Father, Son, and Spirit. Jesus lived the 
life of God : " My meat is to do the will 
of him that sent me " (John iv. 34) ; and 
in full fellowship of the Holy Spirit: 
" In that same hour he rejoiced in the 
Holy Spirit, and said, I thank thee, O 
Father " (Luke x. 21). So reads the cor- 
rect text here. 



The Holy Spirit 75 

The Holy Spirit a Person in the Same Sense 
that the Father is a Person 
It is necessary at least to call attention 
to this important fact, since some Chris- 
tians fail to perceive it. The passages 
just quoted concerning the birth and life 
of Jesus bear witness to the distinct per- 
sonality of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit 
is not merely the power of God or the 
influence of God. Father, Son, and 
Spirit are repeatedly mentioned together 
on the same plane of personal reality. In 
the discourses in the upper room (John 
xiii-xvii.), Jesus many times assumes 
the personal existence of the Holy Spirit 
in as true a sense as he himself existed. 
Let one quotation suffice : " But the Com- 
forter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the 
Father will send in my name, he shall 
teach you all things " (John xiv. 26). In 
the Great Commission Jesus sends forth 
the disciples to baptize " in the name of 
the Father and of the Son and of the 
Holy Ghost" (Matt, xxviii. 19). The 



76 God the Father 

teaching of Christ is clear on this sub- 
ject. 

The Order of the Persons in the 'Trinity 

In his earthly career the Son is under 
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but the 
other facts given seem clearly to show 
that this is not the normal situation. We 
hesitate to lay special emphasis on such a 
point as this, for, of course, in the order 
of the Godhead there is perfect harmony 
as well as identity of essence. And yet 
when the three are spoken of together 
it is usually in the order of Father, Son, 
and Spirit. And more than this, the Son 
himself asserts an order of rank over the 
Spirit in one respect : " But when the 
Comforter is come, whom I will send 
unto you from the Father, even the 
Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from 
the Father, he shall bear witness of me " 
(John xv. 26). In John xiv. 26, he had 
said : " whom the Father will send in 
my name." Moreover, after the resur- 



The Holy Spirit 77 

rection Jesus "breathed on them and 
saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy 
Spirit" (John xx. 22). Jesus said: 
"The Father is greater than I " (John xiv. 
28). In point of rank therefore it seems 
clear that there is a difference in the 
Trinity. 

But the Son "is in the bosom of the 
Father,'' and the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, 
" shall glorify me ; for he shall take of 
mine, and shall declare it unto you " 
(John xvi. 14). Moreover, the Holy 
Spirit " shall not speak from himself ; 
but whatsoever things he shall hear, 
these shall he speak " (John xvi. 13). 
As the Son on earth spoke for the 
Father, so the Holy Spirit would speak 
from the Father and reveal the Son to 
men. The Son came to manifest the 
Father to the world in himself. The 
Spirit would come to reveal to men 
the Son and thus the Father. As the 
Son glorified the Father, so the Spirit 
would glorify the Son. As the Son 



78 God the Father 

owed his birth to the Holy Spirit, so 
men would become children of God by 
the Spirit, though to be sure in a differ- 
ent sense than is true of Jesus. We 
despair of any effort to put in intelligible 
form the basal and eternal facts of the 
glorious Trinity, but none the less we 
reverently and joyfully accept God as re- 
vealed by Christ as Father, Son, and Spirit. 
This is more than an economic or a 
metaphysical Trinity. But we do not 
have three separate Gods. Christianity 
is not polytheistic. Electricity is light, 
heat, and power. Radium bids us all to 
be slow to say dogmatically what cannot 
be true in the realm of the eternal. 

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is Blas- 
phemy against God 

Jesus would not brook an insult to his 
Father nor to the Holy Spirit. The 
Pharisees were not able to deny the real- 
ity of the miracles of Jesus, but in des- 
peration they attributed them to Satan, 



The Holy Spirit 79 

accusing Jesus of being in league with 
the devil. They hoped thus to offset the 
effect of his works. But Jesus boldly 
claimed to work them by the Spirit of 
God (Matt. xii. 28), and accused them 
of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, 
which sin is eternal and has no forgive- 
ness (Mark iii. 29 f.). In fact Jesus held 
blasphemy against the Holy Spirit to be 
worse than blasphemy against the Son : 
"And whosoever shall speak a word 
against the Son, it shall be forgiven him ; 
but whosoever shall speak against the 
Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him " 
(Matt. xii. 32). This is true not because 
the Holy Spirit is greater than the Son, 
but because there was less excuse for it. 
The Son of man was in human form, 
and perhaps more excuse was possible 
when he was treated as a mere man. But 
the Holy Spirit was not man at all, but 
God alone, and the works thus manifestly 
wrought by the Spirit of God were dia- 
bolically attributed to Satan. It was the 



80 God the Father 

climax of malevolence, when the very 
works of God, and plain works of God, 
were credited to the power of Satan. 
This is indeed a Use majeste in the high- 
est sense of that term. The full deity 
and the real personality of the Holy Spirit 
are implied in the teaching of Christ con- 
cerning the unpardonable sin. It is not 
hard to see the justice of this hard pen- 
alty. The depth of the iniquity of the 
Pharisees is thus apprehended against 
whom Jesus later let loose the vials of 
his just wrath (Matt, xxiii.). 

The Promise of the Father to Send the 
Spirit 

We are not to think that the Holy 
Spirit was not in the world at all before 
the day of Christ. No more are we to 
say that God had no kingdom on earth 
before John the Baptist proclaimed the 
advent of the kingdom of God. In a 
new sense the kingdom came with the 
coming of Christ, as in a new sense it will 



The Holy Spirit 81 

be fully come when Christ comes again 
to claim his own. So in a new and 
richer sense the Holy Spirit was to come 
when Jesus went back to the Father, 
although before that day Jesus had said 
that the heavenly Father would " give 
the Holy Spirit to them that ask him " 
(Luke xi. 13). He had also previously 
spoken of the coming of the Holy Spirit 
as "rivers of living water" "which they 
that believed on him were to receive' ' 
(John vii. 39 f.). John adds this also : 
" For the Spirit was not yet given/ ' re- 
ferring to the day of Pentecost. He 
wrote at the close of the century and was 
looking back to the great day when the 
Spirit of God began a new era in Chris- 
tianity. 

To the distressed disciples Jesus prom- 
ised a Comforter who should be with 
them when he was gone : " And I will 
pray the Father, and he shall give you 
another Comforter, that he may be with 
you forever " (John xiv. 16). In fact, 



82 God the Father 

said Jesus, "if I go not away, the Com- 
forter will not come unto you " (John 
xvi.7), "but," he adds, "if I go, I will 
send him unto you," thus identifying his 
work with that of the Father. 

At Jerusalem before the ascension, 
Jesus repeated the promise of the Father 
in specific terms: "And behold I send 
forth the promise of the Father upon 
you" (Luke xxiv. 49), adding: "Ye 
shall receive power, when the Holy 
Spirit is come upon you ' ' (Acts i. 8). 
Clearly then the Holy Spirit was to take 
up the work of the Son and to carry it 
on to the end. But we are not to think 
of a merely absentee Christ who has 
withdrawn to the glory of heaven. He 
is at the right hand of the Father as our 
High Priest, Advocate, and Elder 
Brother, who pleads our cause on high 
with the Father while the Holy Spirit is 
Christ's advocate on earth with men. 
Indeed through the Holy Spirit Jesus is 
with us " always, even unto the end of 



The Holy Spirit 83 

the world " (Matt, xxviii. 20). So then 
all three Persons of the Trinity are ac- 
tively engaged in the work of redemp- 
tion. 

It is possible in a general way to speak 
of the Old Testament dispensation as 
that of God the Father, the dispensation 
in the Gospels as that of Jesus the Son 
of God and the Son of man, and the 
apostolic dispensation as that of the Holy 
Spirit. But this can be said only by way 
of accent , not of separate work. For 
the Holy Spirit is not ignored in the Old 
Testament and the coming of the Mes- 
siah is the one great hope that lights up 
the Old Testament times. In the min- 
istry of Jesus the supreme fact is the full 
revelation of God the Father in the Son 
while he himself is in constant com- 
munion with the Spirit. When the Son 
returned to the bosom of the Father, the 
Holy Spirit is in control of the kingdom 
of heaven on earth, and yet the chief 
Work of the Holy Spirit is to make effec- 



84 God the Father 

tive the work of the Son on the basis of 
whose atoning death it is possible for 
men to come back to God the Father. 
The Spirit, then, is the Father's ever- 
present Messenger who convicts " the 
world in respect of sin, and of righteous- 
ness, and of judgment" (John xvi. 8). 
The Spirit's unutterable groanings in our 
hearts are understood by the Father who 
listens for the cry of his helpless chil- 
dren (Rom. viii. 26 f.). 



CHAPTER VI 

The Relation of God to His World. 

" As thou didst send me into the world, even so sent I 
them into the world " (John xvii. 18). 

F J'VZ'E have no formal discussion of 
yp cosmological theories by Jesus 

nor does he use technical 
phrases about this theme. In this as in 
all things Jesus uses the language of life 
and not the systematized expressions of 
the schools. 

The World View of Jesus 

It need not, however, be assumed that 
Jesus did not have a world view, a welt- 

85 



86 God the Father 

anschauung. Jesus had a world view, 
but used the term in a variety of senses. 
He felt himself apart from " this world " 
and came "for judgment" into it (John 
ix. 39). I am come a light into the 
world " (John xii. 46). He even said : 
" I am the light of the world " (John viii. 
12). His primary object in coming is 
not simply to judge, " but to save the 
world" (John xii. 47). Clearly then 
Jesus had a world outlook. He took 
the world upon his heart in a large way 
and did not have a limited world range. 
Satan offered him in subtle temptation 
" all the kingdoms of the world and the 
glory of them " (Matt. iv. 8), the goal of 
Alexander's ambition, of the Cassars, of 
Napoleon. We may not, then, dismiss 
what Christ has to say on this subject 
with the idea that Jesus was merely a 
narrow provincial of Judea who had no 
world ideas of importance. 

We must remember that his favorite 
title for himself was " The Son of man," 



God and His JVorld 87 

by which he meant not merely a man, 
but the representative man, the son of 
the race who gathered up in himself the 
ideals and hopes of the best in the world, 
the man who was such as God meant 
him to be. As Son of man and Son of 
God Jesus had the largest and the truest 
outlook on the world of any man who 
has ever lived. He can tell us what God 
the Father thinks of the world and how 
men should regard it. " The things 
which I heard from him, these speak I 
unto the world" (John viii. 27). The 
words of John reinforce, if need be, this 
claim of Jesus, for <c all things were made 
by him ; and without him was not any- 
thing made " (John i. 3). " He was in 
the world, and the world was made by 
him, and the world knew him not" 
(John i. 10). It is presumptuous, then, 
to say the least, to posit ignorance of the 
world by Christ, the Creator of the 
world. How much in his human state 
Jesus condescended not to know, or did 



88 God the Father 

not know, since he grew in knowledge, 
we do not understand. But certainly we 
cannot limit his knowledge of the world 
as that of a mere man of the first century 
in Judea. 

The Senses in Which the Term World is 
Used by Jesus 

It is in the Gospel of John that we 
find the word " world " used so much. 
In Mark and Luke each it occurs three 
times only and but nine times in Mat- 
thew. In John we have it 78 times and 
only 184 in all the rest of the New Tes- 
tament. How is it used ? The usual 
word for world as used by Jesus is cosmos. 
Twice only does he use the word oikou- 
mene, the inhabited earth, and both of 
these are in the discourse on the Mount 
of Olives concerning the destruction of 
Jerusalem and the Second Coming 
(Matt. xxiv. 14; Luke xxi. 26). Here 
the world is the earth as the habitation 
of men. Cosmos meant originally orderly 



God and His JVorld 89 

arrangement, then ornament as in 1 Pet. 
iii. 3, " the outward adorning of braiding 
the hair." It was natural for this word 
to be applied to the orderly and orna- 
mental arrangement of the universe. So 
Jesus speaks of the glory which he had 
with the Father " before the world was " 
(John xvii. 5), where he uses it for the 
universe itself. The word is also used 
by Jesus for the earth simply when he 
says : " If a man walk in the day, he 
stumbleth not, because he seeth the light 
of this world " (John xi. 9), again : " I 
am no more in the world " (John xvii. 
11). Then also we find the Master using 
the term for the inhabitants of the earth, 
as when he said : " I came out from the 
Father, and am come into the world " 
(John xvi. 28). So also : " The field is 
the world" (Matt. xiii. 38). 

Besides Jesus spoke of the world as sin- 
ful and different from his disciples : " If 
ye were of the world, the world would 
love its own, but because ye are not of the 



90 God the Father 

world, but I chose you out of the world, 
therefore the world hateth you " (John 
xv. 19). Again Christ conceived of this 
world as distinct from the world to come : 
"Ye are from beneath ; I am from above ; 
ye are of this world ; I am not of this 
world " (John viii. 23). Thus he spoke 
to his enemies after the feast of taber- 
nacles. To Pontius Pilate Jesus said 
simply : " My kingdom is not of this 
world " (John xviii. 36). Clearly then 
the term had a varied content in the 
mind of Christ. He had a world con- 
sciousness and knew that he had entered 
upon a world conflict and was to win a 
world conquest. 

God the Author of the Universe 

With Jesus the world had a " begin- 
ning " (Matt. xxiv. 21) and so is not eter- 
nal. He will say at the judgment: 
" Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit 
the kingdom prepared for you from the 
foundation of the world " (Matt. xxv. 34). 



God and His World 91 

There was a time when he had glory 
" before the world was " (John xvii. 5). 
Moreover, the world will have an end 
(Matt, xxviii. 20), though here an- 
other word (awn) is used which means 
age. Jesus speaks of Satan as the prince 
of this world, but he will be cast out 
(John xii. 31). He by no means ac- 
knowledges Satan as the creator or right- 
ful master of the world. He is distinctly 
a usurper who will be displaced by 
Christ. Jesus does not in so many words 
say that God created the universe, but 
that is the whole implication of what he 
does say in the passages already quoted. 
His idea is evidently the same as that of 
John who speaks of the world as being 
created by the Logos (Christ) who is the 
Son of God (John i. 10). The Father 
is the ultimate creator and the Son 
wrought the Father's will. Jesus called 
himself " the light of the world " (John 
vii. 12), but was doubtless here speaking 
of moral and spiritual light, though he is 



92 God the Father 

in fact the force that holds the universe 
together as Paul shows (Col. i. 17). He 
is indeed the life of the world (Johnvi. 
33 ; xi. 25) in every sense of that term. 
It is not possible to reconcile the teach- 
ing of Jesus about the Father's relation 
to the world with materialism in any 
form. Naturalistic evolution is repug- 
nant to the fundamental conceptions of 
Jesus. So is every theory that postulates 
the eternity of matter. 

Hence God is More than the Universe 

The immanence of God as Father and 
as Son is implicit in many of the sayings 
of Jesus. There is no divorce between 
God and his world. When Jesus calls 
himself the light and the life of the world, 
he is doubtless thinking of the moral 
and spiritual life of men. This is the 
main thing. God himself is spirit and 
our immortal souls are our main con- 
cern. " For what doth it profit a man, 
to gain the whole world, and forfeit his 



God and His World 93 

life ? " (Mark viii. 36). But Jesus spoke 
also to the winds and the waves and they 
obeyed his will (Mark iv. 41). Jesus 
does not think it incongruous for the 
divine will to be exercised on inanimate 
nature. The loaves and fishes alike re- 
spond to his call and thus testify to the 
immanent power of God (Mark vi. 41). 

But if God is present in his world, he 
is more than his world. The world is 
not God in any sense of the term, 
whether the universe, the earth, the 
people, or moral evil in the world. This 
last certainly was other than God and is 
due to the devil who is under suffer- 
ance in the world and whose dark mys- 
terious existence and power over men 
Jesus does not explain, though he freely 
recognizes his baleful influence. But 
when Jesus says God is spirit (John iv. 24) 
he pointedly denies that the material uni- 
verse is God or a part of God, thus re- 
jecting pantheism and monism. What is 
true of the whole is true of the parts, and 



94 God the Father 

so neither the earth nor humanity can 
be God. God is a Spirit and a Person 
who has supreme power over the uni- 
verse. It is his world for he made it. 
It is the expression of his will, but there 
is a difference between subject and ob- 
ject. The creative activity of the Father 
is continuous. He has not tied himself 
up in his own laws, but exerts a con- 
stant control in nature. " My Father 
worketh even until now, and I work " 
(John v. 17). 

God has life in himself and has given 
the Son to have life in himself (John v. 
26). Spontaneous generation is a futile 
theory, for life is in God. It is not 
strange then that the greatest modern 
scientists, even those who are not Chris- 
tians or even theists as Spencer and Hux- 
ley, frankly confess their ignorance of 
the mystery of life. Life cannot be put 
under the microscope. It is not a chem- 
ical process nor a part of a cell tissue. 
Life is in God. God alone gives life as 



God and His World 95 

he wills. Life works the cells and builds 
the marvellous structures in the physical 
world. But life will never be shown to 
be a mere mechanical process. Not even 
radium is life as some excited materialists 
are saying. God is life. 

God Loves the World 

God does not acknowledge the devil's 
claim to ownership of the world. There 
is evil, terrible evil in the world. It was 
a good world when God made it. It is 
a marred and ruined world now, but 
none the less God loves it. His pity 
towards it is all the greater because of 
the evil wrought in it. God does not 
view with unconcern the moral situation 
in the world. If Jesus did not himself 
speak the words recorded in John iii. 
16, as possibly he did not, they at any 
rate fully express his revelation of the 
Father's attitude toward the world: 
" For God so loved the world, that he 
gave his only begotten Son, that whoso- 



96 God the Father 

ever belie veth on him should not per- 
ish, but have eternal life." God does not 
wish the world to perish, nor any part of 
it. " For God," the passage (John iii. 17) 
continues, " sent not the Son into the 
world to condemn the world ; but that 
the world should be saved through 
him." 

The Father has indeed " given all 
judgment unto the Son" (John v. 22), 
but the Father prefers that in every case 
the Son shall bring salvation rather than 
condemnation. " For I came not to 
judge the world, but to save the world " 
(John xii. 47). "To save the world." 
That is the profoundest philosophy of 
Christianity as expounded by the author 
of the gospel. The Father wished to 
bring back to himself a world that had 
wandered away from him. This is the 
tragedy of the universe. This is the story 
of divine love that dwarfs into littleness 
all others. The Father gave his only be- 
gotten son for a world that had learned to 



God and His IVorld 97 

hate its Creator, that had spurned a 
Father's love, and that refused to come 
back home and be reconciled. To bring 
harmony into the universe again, to save 
the lost, the Son gave his own life a ran- 
som on the cross, a victim to the hate of 
the world for which he died. This cruel 
death was necessary as a basis for the 
atoning work of the Son and to make it 
possible for the Father to save those that 
believe. But it is none the less the cli- 
max of human sin. 

The attitude of the Father towards 
publicans and sinners on the one hand and 
the self-righteous Scribes and Pharisees 
on the other is set forth in a matchless 
manner in the great parable of the Prod- 
igal Son (Luke xv. 11-32). We shall 
need to come back to this parable again 
under another point of view. But here 
let us see the Father's desire that both 
the elder and the younger sons should 
dwell in his house. He did not drive 
the younger away nor did he make him 



98 God the Father 

come back, but, O, what a welcome he 
gave him when he did come back with 
a repentant heart. He did not make the 
elder brother sulk in the fields, but he 
would not drive away the lost son now 
found again, not even to please the elder 
brother. The heart of God yearns for 
the world to be his. For this purpose 
Christ sent the disciples on their world- 
wide mission (Matt, xxviii. 19). The 
conquest of the world, no more no less, 
is the goal of Christianity, the furthest 
reach of the Father's love. 

But His Kingdom is not of This World 

If it were, there would be no need of 
it and no room for it. If Christianity is 
" other- worldliness, " that is precisely the 
thing most needed for the world. The 
world's hunger is for something other 
than itself, something to make it better 
than it is. No world- originated system 
could or can make the world better than 
the world. Hell was tugging at the world 



God and His World 99 

to pull it down and was already victor. 
The only hope was from above. The 
constant claim of Jesus was : " I am from 
above " (John viii. 23). The kingdom 
that he set up was not of this world 
(John xviii. 36), was prepared for them 
before the foundation of the world 
(Matt. xxv. 34), was an invisible king- 
dom in the heart (Luke xvii. 20 f.), and 
was to win. " I have overcome the 
world " (John xvi. 33), Jesus said. He 
spoke as a Conqueror and he is still con- 
quering. " In the world ye have tribu- 
lation ; but be of good cheer " (John xvi. 
33). The day will come when " the 
kingdom of the world is become the 
kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ " 
(Rev. xi. 15). Till then God is in Christ 
reconciling the world to himself. We 
are the messengers of God and Christ 
to speed the message, to further the mis- 
sion of Christ to the world, to win the 
world to Christ, for he alone can bless 
and save a world lost in sin. 



tofC. 



CHAPTER VII 

Relatio7t of God to the Unsaved. 

" For the Son of man came to seek and to save that which 
was lost" (Luke xix. 10). 

yti RE the wicked children of God ? 
yjf That depends upon what one 
means by the term " children of 
God." Is God the Father of the un- 
saved ? That likewise depends on the 
idea in the term " Father." As in most 
controversies, the terms need definition 
if we are to proceed intelligently in the 
apprehension of the relation of God to 
the unsaved. The expression " universal 
fatherhood of God " has become a party 
ioo 



Relation to the Unsaved 101 

shibboleth to some extent in our day. 
Not always do the persons who use it 
understand each other. The Universal- 
ists mean that all men are indeed the spir- 
itual children of God and will be mem- 
bers of the family of God in heaven. 
Those who hold the other extreme deny 
that any are in any sense the children of 
God save those who are born again into 
the family of God by the renewal of 
heart through the Holy Spirit. 

We were Created in the Image of God 

This early statement in Genesis is ac- 
cepted by all as an accurate statement of 
man's original spiritual condition except 
it be anti-Christian evolutionists who deny 
the spiritual kinship to God. The orig- 
inal likeness to God is in the spirit, not 
in the body which is of the earth. But 
on the physical side we are the children 
of God in the sense that he is the Creator 
of all things. But clearly more than this 
is involved in the image of God which 



102 God the Father 

was stamped in our souls. God has re- 
lations to men that he does not have to 
the beasts of the field. 

Alienation from God 

The background of the life and work 
of Christ is just this. The world had 
gone away from God. The world was 
lost. Something had come in to break 
the previous relation to God. No longer 
are men, save an elect few, on terms of 
fellowship with God. They are out- 
casts from the family of God, aliens from 
the commonwealth of Israel, without 
God, in fact hostile towards God. If such 
men are still children of God, they are dis- 
obedient children who have rebelled 
against the Father, who have left home, 
and who have gone over to the enemy 
of the Father. They have caused them- 
selves to be disinherited, have sold their 
birthright, and have refused all overtures 
to return to the Father's love and home. 
This in fact seems to be the conception 



Relation to the Unsaved 103 

of the unsaved that underlies the teach- 
ing of Jesus. Hence it is that not all 
who hear the glad news of salvation will 
be saved. They are in the enemy's 
country and will not give up their new 
pleasures for what they have left and 
may get by returning. When the seed 
is sown, the soil may be very hard and 
beaten, or stony, or thorny. Or perhaps 
the tares grow right in the midst of the 
wheat. " The good seed, then, are the 
sons of the kingdom ; and the tares the 
sons of the evil one" (Matt. xiii. 38 f.). 
Here "good" is not good by nature, 
but by virtue of the choice to become V 
sons of the kingdom. 

The Condemnation of the Father 

The unsaved are under the displeasure 
of the Father. If John the Baptist called 
the Pharisees "offspring of vipers" (Matt, 
iii. 7), so did Jesus : " Ye offspring of 
vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak 
good things ? " (Matt. xii. 34). This was 



104 God the Father 

at the time of the blasphemous accusa- 
tion. But at the close of the terrible de- 
nunciation on the last day in the temple, 
when Christ let loose the pent up indig- 
nation of the years, he said : " Ye ser- 
pents, ye offspring of vipers, how shall 
ye escape the judgment of hell ? " (Matt. 
xxiii. 33). He had poured vials of wrath 
against these consummate hypocrites who 
juggled with the consciences of men and 
the teachings of God and made their 
proselytes twofold more sons of hell than 
they were themselves (Matt. xxii. 15). 

Certainly there was unusual provoca- 
tion to have called forth such denuncia- 
tion from the gentle Christ who was a 
volcano only to the enemies of God his 
Father. And yet the fact that Jesus 
could with justice so characterize these 
men makes it impossible to think of them 
as actually belonging to the family of 
God. They can only be called renegade 
children. They had accused Jesus of 
being in league with Satan and thus hav- 



Relation to the Unsaved 105 

ing power to cast out demons, when in 
fact they were themselves guilty of the 
unpardonable sin in thus attributing the 
manifest work of the Holy Spirit to the 
devil (Matt. xii. 31 f.). They are " guilty 
of an eternal sin " (Mark iii. 29). Again 
in a strenuous controversy with the 
Pharisees in Jerusalem at the feast of tab- 
ernacles six months before his death, 
Jesus expressly denied that they were 
the children of God, and said in plain 
terms that they were children of the 
devil. " If God were your Father, ye 
would love me" (John viii. 42). "Ye 
are of your father, the devil, and the 
lusts of your father it is your will to do ,J 
(John viii. 44). They were the literal 
descendants of Abraham, but were not 
the spiritual children of Abraham (John 
viii. 39). So then God had created 
them ; but they now belonged to the 
family of the devil. 

Judas is repeatedly said to belong to 
the devil (as John vi. 70). The poor de- 



106 God the Father 

moniacs were wholly under the power 
of demons, the agents of Satan. It is 
not possible to deny successfully the re- 
ality of the demoniacal possessions and 
maintain the spiritual supremacy of 
Christ. The efforts to do so are all futile. 
But, it may be replied, these are ex- 
ceptional cases. They are specimens of 
the worst elements in society from the 
spiritual point of view. It yet remains 
to show that the bulk of the unsaved are 
not in the family of God. Jesus had 
pointedly said in the Sermon on the 
Mount that, unless the righteousness of 
the people exceeded that of the Scribes 
and Pharisees they should not enter the 
kingdom of heaven (Matt. v. 20). Later 
he accused the Pharisees of making void 
the word of God because of their tradi- 
tion (Matt. xv. 6). But Jesus made a 
much broader statement when he said to 
the Galilean throng in the synagogue at 
Capernaum : " No man can come to me 
except the Father which sent me draw 



Relation to the Unsaved 107 

him " (John vi. 44). This he said when 
he was explaining to the unspiritual pop- 
ulace that he was a spiritual Messiah. 
This announcement helped to break the 
charm of his power over them. If that 
was the kind of Messiah that he claimed 
to be, and not a great Jewish king, they 
wished none of him. But the whole 
passage serves to show the distance from 
God and Christ at which the unspiritual 
multitude dwells. It is not merely the 
leaders who are away from the Father, 
but the people as well. "Ye have seen 
me, and yet believe not" (John vi. 36). 
More than all this, the impulse to come 
to Christ comes from the Father. It is 
a hopeless situation out of Christ, what 
Paul calls "dead in trespasses and sins." 
Christ even speaks of " this evil genera- 
tion " (Matt. xii. 45). Christ is himself 
the test of character and the door to eter- 
nal life. " No one cometh unto the 
Father, but by me " (John xiv. 6). All 
who do not thus " come " by him are 



108 God the Father 

lost. "He that belie veth not has been 
judged already" (John iii. 18). If this 
last passage is the teaching of the evan- 
gelist only, it is certainly in harmony 
with the teaching of Jesus as to the con- 
dition of the unsaved. 

Hell and Eternal Punishment 

Jesus taught that the wicked would 
spend eternity in hell in the outer dark- 
ness away from the presence of the 
Father. "The outer darkness" (Matt. 
viii. 12 ; xxii. 13 ; xxv. 30) is one of the 
most vivid descriptions of the state of 
the lost used by the Master. They are 
away from God who is light, away from 
the company of the redeemed. Another 
picture is presented under the image of 
the undying worm : " where their worm 
dieth not " (Mark ix. 48). Hades does 
not mean place of torment itself, but 
merely the unseen world ; yet in Luke 
xvi. 23 it is used evidently for that part 
of the unseen world where torment is, 



Relation to the Unsaved 109 

for the wicked rich man in Hades "lifted 
up his eyes, being in torments.' ' This 
is not a temporary state for " there is a 
great gulf fixed " (Luke xvi. 26) between 
the wicked rich man and Lazarus. This 
is a parable, but it correctly represents 
Christ's idea of the fate of the wicked. 
Moreover, Jesus often expressly uses the 
term Gehenna for the place of the lost. 
It is not simply " the hell of fire " (Matt. 
v. 22), but the place where the soul and 
body of the wicked are sent by God the 
Father (Matt. x. 28). It is impossible 
for the Pharisees whom Jesus denounc- 
ed to escape Gehenna (Matt, xxiii. 33). 
These are terrible pictures of a place and 
state of eternal punishment. Certainly 
they do not have to be taken literally 
any more than the picture of heaven as 
a city with streets and river. But the 
figure in both cases falls short of the 
reality. Each man makes a hell for him- 
self in the memory of his sin and the 
lashing of his conscience. The law of 



no God the Father 

heredity reinforces the teaching about 
hell. If there is eternal progress in holi- 
ness, there is also eternal progress in evil. 
We must not let sentimental notions 
about the fatherhood of God destroy the 
real teaching of Christ about the Father. 
Jesus himself called the wicked " lost " 
(Luke xix. 10). At the judgment day he 
will say : " Depart from me, ye^ cursed, 
into the eternal fire which is prepared for 
the devil and his angels " (Matt. xxv. 41). 
This awful doom is solemnly repeated in 
measured words at the close of the same 
discourse on the Mount of Olives : " And 
these shall go away into eternal punish- 
ment : but the righteous into eternal life " 
(Matt. xxv. 46). It is useless to seek to 
whittle away the meaning of " eternal " 
with " punishment' ' It is the very word 
that is used with " life." The arguments 
that will disprove the eternity of the 
" fire " and the " punishment " will like- 
wise destroy the eternity of the "life." 
They stand or fall together. Hence we 



Relation to the Unsaved 1 1 1 

are not to say that God is the Father of 
all men in the sense that he will not 
punish unforgiven sin. To say that is 
not only to contradict the plain teach- 
ing of Christ on the subject, but is also 
to have an inadequate conception of sin, 
God's view of sin, and God's own nature. 

God Seeking his Lost Children 

But least of all should we attribute 
malice to the Father in the punishment 
of the unsaved. Jesus not only taught 
us to pray for our enemies, but he did 
so himself as he hung on the cross (ac- 
cording to what is probably the correct 
text in Luke xxiii. 34) : <c Father, forgive 
them ; for they know not what they do. ,, 
The three immortal parables in the fif- 
teenth chapter of Luke show us the 
yearning love of the Father for the lost. 
If the shepherd goes after the one lost 
sheep, so the Father has sent his Son to 
save the publicans and sinners. And 
there is joy in heaven when the lost is 



1 1 2 God the Father 

found. If the woman searches for the 
lost piece of money and rejoices when 
she finds it, so there is joy in the pres- 
ence of the angels of God over one sin- 
ner that repenteth. But this is not all. 
If the prodigal son, after wandering in 
sin, repents and comes back with humble 
confession on his lips, he finds the 
Father watching for him. " For this 
my son was dead, and is alive again ; 
he was lost, and is found " (Luke xv. 24). 
That is it. The lost children are dead 
children, dead to the influence of the 
Father's love, and have lost connection 
with him. This is precisely the work of 
Christ, to bring to life again the dead chil- 
dren, to find the lost sons and daughters, 
and bring them home again (John v. 25). 

Reconciliation Possible in Christ 

But there must first be reconciliation. 
Home will not be home so long as the 
wicked feel as they do toward the 
Father. Christ's blood "is shed for 



Relation to the Unsaved 113 

many unto remission of sins" (Matt. 
xxvi. 28). He gave his " life a ransom 
for many " (Mark x. 45). This was not 
an accident. The death of the Son was 
part of the plan of the Father, who 
" gave his only begotten Son, that who- 
soever believeth on him should not per- 
ish, but have eternal life " (John hi. 16). 
The death of Christ was known to him 
from the beginning of his ministry. He 
knew that they would destroy the temple 
of his body and that he would raise it 
again (John ii. 19). He was the bride- 
groom who would be taken away (Mark 
ii. 20). He died not as an example to 
men, but to save men. His death for 
sin forms the basis of the reconciling 
grace of God. God provided the sac- 
rifice for sin in the voluntary offering 
of his Son. This basis for reconcilia- 
tion makes it possible for the love of 
God which sent the Son to offer pardon 
for sin. But the pardon must be ac- 
cepted. There must be confession of 

H 



1 1 4 God the Father 

sin. The prodigal son cannot come back 
with a rebellious heart as if he had never 
been away. He would not be happy if 
he did so come. To confess a wrong is 
the only manly thing to do. The cul- 
prit cannot make atonement, but he can 
make confession. God himself has pro- 
vided the atonement in Christ, but the 
sinner must confess his guilt. This is 
the straightforward plan of redemption 
as taught by Jesus. Thus the Father 
will win back the erring children who 
have gone astray, who have lost their 
place in the Father's family, and who 
are willing to come back on the Father's 
terms. They are gracious terms and bear 
hard on none. 

Surely the Father could ask no less 
than loving obedience when he offers 
so much. He has already shown his own 
boundless love for sinners in the gift of 
his Son. He has a right to expect love 
and service in return. To those who 
will love Christ, the door is opened 



Relation to the Unsaved 1 1 5 

wide. " But as many as received him, 
to them gave he the right to become 
children of God, even to them that be- 
lieve on his name" (John i. 12). This 
is John's interpretation of the relation 
between God and the unsaved. Christ 
offers the " right" of sonship to every- 
one who will believe on his name. This 
is the only way for those who have lost 
their spiritual birthright (and all have) to 
get it back. We must " become chil- 
dren of God." 

Otherwise the Condemnation Remains 

God is love. This is the greatest fact 
about God. God is the Father. Jesus 
made this plainer to men than it ever 
was before. But these great and glori- 
ous truths do not exhaust the truth about 
God. He is the " Holy Father " (John 
xvii. 11) and the " Righteous Father" 
(John xvii. 25). This righteousness is 
as true as his fatherly love, in fact his 
love is shown in his fatherly righteous- 



n6 God the Father 

ness. He is absolutely "good" and alone 
in such goodness (Mark x. 18). He will 
not pass transgression by without satis- 
faction to his own sense of right. For 
sin is with God a terrible reality, not a 
mere accident, misfortune, or disease. 
He holds us responsible for our sins. 
We are guilty. God is willing to accept, 
in fact himself provided, the priestly sac- 
rifice of his own Son for human sin. 
That is the limit of even divine love. 
The depth of the riches of the love of 
God in Christ no man will ever know. 
To refuse such love confirms eternally 
the condemnation already resting on the 
sinner who deserves his punishment, who 
has sinned against the light of nature, 
conscience, and often even revelation. 
The awful cloud of the wrath of the 
Father rests on the rebellious children 
who have spurned his love and mercy. 
No wrath is quite so terrible as the right- 
eous wrath of a loving Father. A chief 
punishment in that wrath will be eternal 
banishment from the Father's face. 






CHAPTER VIII 

Relation of God to Believers. 

"If a man love me, he will keep my word : and my Father 
will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode 
with him " (John xiv. 23). 

Is God the Father of all Men 

X>LEARLY it is not true that unre- 
y^j generate men are no more the 
children of God than the beasts of 
the field. It is true that some scientists 
conceive that all animals have souls, that 
in the spiritual realm men differ from 
other animals only in degree, not in na- 
ture. But, whether in degree or nature, 

117 



1 1 8 God the Father 

men are like God in a sense not true of 
the lower animals. Man is indeed the 
crown of God's creation and his destiny 
puts him far above other created beings 
in the world. But, while all this is true, 
the general Fatherhood of God, which 
has an element of truth in it, and a very 
precious truth, has been much over- 
worked in our day. It is by no means 
the case that men have only to recognize 
the fact that they are the children of 
God in order to enter into the privileges 
of sonship. The sin of which men are 
guilty towards God cannot be covered 
up in such a cavalier fashion as that. 

If in one sense men are naturally chil- 
dren of God, in another they are by na- 
ture children of wrath, being born in 
sin and conceived in iniquity. Besides 
inheriting original sin they become such 
disobedient children that they have for- 
feited all claims to the Father's favor, 
have left his love and care, gone to the 
enemy's country, and can be called the 



Relation to Believers 119 

children of the world, in fact the chil- 
dren of the devil. This is the actual 
situation which must not be obscured 
by the truth that is contained in the 
general fatherhood of God over men, a 
fatherhood made inoperative by sin. The 
rebellious child, poisoned by sin, has 
been justly disinherited by the Father. 
He can no longer call God his Father. 

Becoming Sons of God 

So serious and vital is the restoration 
to the favor of God that it is spoken of 
by Jesus as a new birth. " Except a 
man be born anew, he cannot see the 
kingdom of God (John iii. 3). Nico- 
demus stumbled helplessly before this 
radical truth. Three times Christ ear- 
nestly and solemnly reiterated that we 
must be born anew or from above, if 
we are to enter the kingdom of God. 
In the spiritual life, then, we must start 
all over again as a little child begins his 
life. The entrance upon the new life 



120 God the Father 

is a birth of the Spirit of God (John iii. 
5, 7). So far have we fallen from our 
high spiritual estate that we are lost. 
We have broken connection with God, 
and are utterly unable to restore it. Un- 
til we obtain this initial spiritual experi- 
ence signified by the new birth, we 
cannot lay claim to membership in the 
kingdom of God. By this new birth 
we at once enter upon the privileges 
and blessings of the kingdom. It is not 
possible to make this language of Jesus 
signify merely a recognition of sonship 
on man's part. It is a vital religious ex- 
perience by which one enters into defi- 
nite relation with God. 

It is true that this is a restoration of 
a relation that once existed between God 
and man in the beginning, a relation 
that was broken by man's sin. To all 
intents and purposes it is a new relation. 
We must begin de novo and can claim 
no " rights " by reason of the beginning. 
God's love has brooded over us in all the 



Relation to Believers 121 

ages, has planned the means by which 
we may return to his favor, but none 
the less he demands a definite experience, 
the obtaining a new heart on the part of 
the one who comes back to him. There 
must be a positive turning away from sin 
and a definite acceptance of God as Father 
and Christ as Saviour from sin. The New 
Testament calls this experience on man's 
side repentance, conversion, and faith. 
But this great surrender to God is due in 
every case to the work of the Holy Spirit 
and is in connection with, and logically 
the result of, the new birth of the Spirit. 
The Father enables those who believe to 
become his children. " But as many as 
received him, to them gave he the right 
to become children of God, even to them 
that believe on his name " (John i. 12). 
It is the Evangelist who says this and he 
is speaking of the Son. It is only through 
the Son that the Father opens the door 
to his love. The "right" or "power," 
it will be observed, is a gift. We cannot 



122 God the Father 

claim any " rights " with God save jus- 
tice. That we shall receive, and that is 
our very undoing, for eternal punishment 
is retributive and not corrective. This 
life is the probation period. The future 
life is the place of eternal states with re- 
wards and restrictions. The " right " to 
" become " children of God will be 
" given " to them that believe. 

Here we face one of the ultimate prob- 
lems in theology, the relation between 
divine sovereignty and human free agency. 
We know both to be facts, but we are 
unable to offer any solution of the rela- 
tion between them. We may be sure 
that the exercise of God's elective grace 
is in love, that it respects man's independ- 
ence, and that it gives no one a ground 
of complaint against God. We may also 
freely preach a universal gospel which 
is the power of God unto salvation 
to all who believe. God does not ap- 
point the ministers of the Word to 
select the subjects of his grace. He 



Relation to Believers 123 

does that himself. Ours to offer a 
free gospel to all and press it home on 
the hearts of men. God will be faithful 
to his part of the work. Hyper-Calvin- 
ism is as unscriptural as extreme Armin- 
ianism. Neither point of view embraces 
the whole truth. We must " believe on 
his name/' but we are " born, not of 
blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor 
of the will of man, but of God " (John i. 
13). This is what Paul calls "adop- 
tion " (Rom. viii. 15), " whereby we cry, 
Abba, Father/' The signal and the 
supreme truth in it all is that the 
Father has made it possible for us to 
become his children in the real and 
vital sense. 

The Choice of the Father and the Choice of 
the Child 

No one can come unto Christ unless 
the Father draw him (John vi. 44). God 
is life and the sinner is dead. His will 
is ruined by sin. He loves sin and is at 



124 God the Father 

home with selfish gratification and indul- 
gence. The impulse to return to God 
must come from God. Out of the mass 
of rebellious sinners, who are no longer 
in his family, the Father chooses the 
elect, those whom he wills to be his. It 
is idle for us to speculate about the 
grounds of this choice. There is no 
merit in any of us. We have all sinned 
and come short. Nor do we know the 
processes by which the Spirit of God 
works. But we know this. The rebel- 
lious child must will to come back. His 
own will must respond to the will of the 
Father. In the blending of the will of 
the Father and the will of the repentant 
sinner we have the great initial experience 
of the Christian life. The will is king 
in the realm of spirit. It is a solemn 
crisis when the awakened conscience bat- 
tles for the spiritual victory. " Ye will 
not come to me, that ye may have life " 
(John v. 40). It is just this element of 
will, of choice, that gives moral charac- 



Relation to Believers 125 

ter to the acts of men, that makes us 
godlike in prerogative. 

Reconciliation is the favorite term of 
Paul for this spiritual process. It is not 
used by Jesus, but the idea occurs at 
every turn. The Father was looking for 
the prodigal to return and was glad to 
hear the words of confession from his 
lips. The joy in the heart of the Father 
and of the new-found son is the joy of 
reconciliation. Likewise there is " joy 
in heaven over one sinner that repent- 
eth " (Luke xv. 7) as is brought out in 
the story of the lost sheep and also of the 
lost coin (Luke xv. 10), though, to be 
sure, the element of reconciliation is not 
distinctly emphasized. " Forgive is a 
word that Jesus often uses of the Father 
in relation to the sinner (Matt. vi. 14 f.). 
God does not forgive our sins without 
reparation. The outraged law must be 
satisfied. Jesus therefore offered himself 
a "ransom for many " (Matt. xx. 28). 
The death of Christ makes a basis for 



126 God the Father 

reconciliation. The cross is the hardest 
word that can be spoken against sin. It 
cost the Father the blood of his own Son 
to make it possible to forgive sinners. 
But the basis of reconciliation is not ac- 
tual reconciliation. The work is not 
fully achieved till the sinner accepts 
heartily the terms of reconciliation. 
Then he comes to God and is restored 
to the family of God. The choice to 
become a child of God is the highest 
exercise of man's moral nature. If the 
Father chooses the child and adopts him 
into his blessed family, no less the child 
chooses the Father and wills to become 
a member of this glorious household of 
faith. 

How does the Father feel towards those 
wayward children who have wandered 
astray ? If we knew the terrible heinous- 
ness of sin and the bright holiness of God, 
we might answer. The nearest parallel 
that we can find is in the lives of boys 
and girls who have brought disgrace on 



Relation to Believers 127 

the family name. They are outcasts. 
Their names are never mentioned. In- 
dignation, just indignation, is felt by 
father and mother, at the treatment such 
children have given them. And yet, 
along with the indignation, there is un- 
utterable sorrow and deathless yearning 
for the lost son, the lost daughter. De- 
tectives may be employed to find them. 
Message after message may be sent that 
forgiveness awaits them if they will re- 
pent and come back. There is the 
trouble, that word " repent." In despera- 
tion one day the son or daughter comes 
back with a broken heart and confesses 
all. This is a poor parallel and fails at 
many points, most of all in the failure to 
set forth the awfulness of sin and the 
need of propitiation, not mere confession. 
But the double emotion of righteous 
anger and compassionate love is set forth. 
Let us in all our theories and explanations 
never wander from the circle of God's 
surpassing love, a love that held not back 



128 God the Father 

the Son himself that some of the lost 
might be found, a love too holy to for- 
give without justice to his own sense of 
right and confession by the sinner. 

The Privileges of Children of God 

The first one is the right to say 
" Father " again. That of itself is worth 
more than all that the kingdom of Satan 
offers. The first word that the prodigal 
was going to say and did say on his re- 
turn was " Father." He did not wish 
to say it in his sinful exile. We need 
not, nor perhaps can we, decide in each 
instance when Jesus says " Your Father " 
whether the audience was composed 
wholly of disciples or not. Certainly in 
the Sermon on the Mount, when he uses 
" Father " in relation to men sixteen 
times, he was addressing the disciples in 
the presence of a mixed multitude ac- 
cording to both Matthew and Luke. The 
same thing is true in Matt. xiii. But if 
he does so speak, this fact would not 



Relation to Believers 129 

mean, when he says " Your Father " that 
he was contemplating under this expres- 
sion those who were rebellious children 
and whom he elsewhere calls children of 
the devil. Let us acknowledge at once 
that when Jesus says " Thy Father," 
" our Father," "your Father," " your 
heavenly Father," he has in mind those 
who are in vital relation with the Father, 
the members of the family of God, the 
kingdom of heaven. Jesus does not say 
that the unsaved are already children of 
God. But this fact by no means proves 
that the unsaved are not disinherited chil- 
dren, lost children of God, whom the 
Father is anxious to save, and whom the 
Son came to save. Who are the saved in 
truth but the lost children who have been 
found? Before they were found they 
were just like the rest not yet found. 
The once lost but now found child can 
say " Father." That is his privilege. 

Prayer is the breath, the atmosphere 
of the children of God. Gratitude and 



130 God the Father 

petition are on the lips of the child and 
in his heart as he communes with his 
Father. The coldly critical spirit that 
looks on prayer as an " interference " with 
the laws of God has a pitifully narrow 
idea of the life between father and child. 
Jesus taught the disciples to pray and 
say "Our Father " (Matt. vi. 9). It is 
idle to ask if the unsaved can pray. Cer- 
tainly they can, but it is not communion 
of spirit such as the restored child en- 
joys. It is rather a cry in the dark, a cry 
for help, for mercy. Such a cry is heard, 
but the richness of prayer belongs to the 
soul that has come back to the Father 
and rejoices in his love. 

There is fear still in the child's heart 
towards the Father. It is sad to see a 
child lose fear for his father, for he has 
lost respect for him. The Christian has 
small ground to fear those who can harm 
only the body, but we all should fear 
God (Matt. x. 28-30), both in the sense 
of reverence and dread, though finally 



Relation to Believers 131 

perfect love casteth out fear. Our love 
for God must not be flippant, effervescent, 
nor too familiar. The sense of fear is 
necessary to the high and holy love which 
should burn in our hearts towards the 
Lord of All. Such fear will not prevent 
the blessed peace and fellowship which 
constitute the kingdom of heaven as an 
inner state of the heart. This fellowship 
rests on trust, and trust is just the essen- 
tial bond between us and God. He de- 
mands our confidence. He has done 
enough for us to deserve our unhesitating 
trust for present and future. He has a 
full hand of spiritual mercies for the 
child who exercises unreserved trust. 
This is the privilege of a child of God, 
to trust him. " Be not anxious " is the 
message that Jesus brings as the secret 
of a happy life. Put your treasure in 
heaven, " for where your treasure is, 
there will your heart be also " (Luke xii. 
34). 



132 God the Father 

The Father s Care 

Such trust is amply justified on the 
part of God's children. Why worry 
about food and raiment? "Your 
heavenly Father knoweth that ye have 
need of all these things " (Matt. vi. 32). 
Look at the lilies of the field in their 
royal purple. See the birds of the 
heaven as they carol their joy. Look at 
the sparrows, not one of whom is for- 
gotten in the sight of God. " But the 
very hairs of your head are all numbered. 
Fear not ; ye are of more value than 
many sparrows " (Luke xii. 6 f.) These 
and other strong expressions Jesus used 
to set forth the providential care of the 
Father for his children. 

The teaching lifts man into dignity. 
If God cares this much for men, they 
must be worth something. Clearly 
Jesus put a higher estimate upon a man 
than those who make him merely the 
victim of iron laws, mechanical forces. 
The supreme truth here is that God 



Relation to Believers 133 

does have a special care for his children, 
for those who trust him. It is the love 
of the Almighty Father that finds the 
petty details of human life not too small 
for his interest and concern. He does 
the least : he counts the hairs of our 
head. He does the greatest; he gives 
us the Holy Spirit. He does everything 
for us that makes for our spiritual well- 
being. Not that he abrogates the laws 
of life nor removes from us the necessity 
of personal activity and struggle with our 
environment. But the Father knows, 
cares, and helps. All else is easy when 
this is true. The Father and the Son 
make their abode with the believer 
(John xiv. 23). The union with Christ 
secures union with the Father, a union 
that is vital and eternal and fruitful (John 
xv. 1-10). 

The Duties of Children 

Willing obedience is the highest form 
that love can take towards one's father. 



134 God the Father 

It should not be a cross to hearken to 
the voice of God, if we really love him. 
The reason that children find it hard to 
obey is because self is assertive. But in 
the religious life the very essence of 
spirituality is submission to the will of 
God. It is sin that makes the child set 
himself in resistance to the father. 
Obedience does not save, but obedience 
is a test of salvation. By their fruits ye 
shall know them. By obedience we find 
the doors opened to spiritual growth. If 
any man is willing to do his will, he shall 
know of the teaching. It is not enough 
for the child of God to talk about the 
privileges of sonship and disregard God's 
purpose. We are saved to serve. 

Jesus sends us forth as the Father sent 
him. We cannot call ourselves loyal 
sons of God because we have correct 
ideas of the way men become children 
of God while we lead disobedient and 
sinful lives. We must hear the call of 
God to send the gospel to all the world 



Relation to Believers 135 

as well as to have correct teaching and 
lead holy lives. As with Christ, so with 
us, our meat and drink should be to do 
the will of our Father. If the Father 
and the Son really dwell in us, this will 
be our highest joy. Duty becomes hap- 
piness, for our self-will is lost in the will 
of our Father whose we are and whom 
we serve. " If ye love me, ye will keep 
my commandments " (John xiv. 15). 

The Destiny of Children 

It is to be with the Father forever. 
For this purpose the Son will come again 
and take us to the Father. He has 
" many mansions " ready. He comes, 
we may believe, in the death of every 
believer and takes him to God. He will 
come to raise the bodies of all in the end. 
Meanwhile the child is to be like the 
Father. He is to be perfect as the 
Father is perfect (Matt. v. 48). He 
is to be, for example, merciful as the 
Father is merciful (Luke vi. 36). We 



136 God the Father 

know little as to the details of heaven 
and hell. But this much is certain, that 
hell is the fulfilment of the irrevocable 
choice of evil made here. It is a contin- 
uous confirmation of that love of sin and 
identification with sin. So heaven is fel- 
lowship with the Father and increasing 
likeness to the Father. "We shall be 
like him, for we shall see him as he is." 
Jesus is our Elder Brother and we are to 
be his brethren. God is his Father in a 
sense not true of us (John xx. 17), and 
yet he calls us " brethren/' We are his 
" brothers " and " sisters. " " For who- 
soever shall do the will of God, the same 
is my brother, and sister, and mother ,: 
(Mark iii. 34 f.). 

It was to bring this to pass that Jesus 
left his throne on high, became a servant 
to men, suffered the rebuffs from the 
religious leaders of the time, endured the 
shame of the cross, died for our sins, and 
rose again. He is not ashamed to call us 
brethren (Heb. ii. 11). This is the high 



Relation to Believers 137 

destiny of those who believe in God the 
Father and Jesus Christ whom he has 
sent. These are the real children of God, 
not those who were the literal descend- 
ants of Abraham. The real Israel to 
Jesus, as to Paul, is the spiritual Israel. 
The true family of God are the elect 
who love him, the church for which 
Jesus died and which he washed with 
his blood. " Come, ye blessed of my 
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared 
for you from the foundation of the 
world " (Matt. xxv. 34). 



CHAPTER IX 

Jesus Conception of God Compared 
with the Apostolic Teaching. 

" He shall glorify me : for he shall take of mine and de- 
clare it unto you " (John xvi. 14). 

" Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and 
having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, 
he hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear " (Acts ii. 33). 

" jD ACK to christ " has been the 

J^j watchword of modern New 
Testament theology. It is a 
good word to hearken to, provided 
no unnatural antithesis is made be- 
tween Jesus and his Apostles. The 
historical method of Biblical study can 
138 



The Apostolic Teaching 139 

be as arbitrary and unreliable in its re- 
sults as the purely theological method if 
proper poise and balance be not pre- 
served. It is literally true that it has cost 
a real struggle for the modern world to 
brush aside mediaeval theological con- 
ceptions that obscured the person and 
teaching of Jesus. The battle for the 
restoration of the original gospel has been 
greatly prolonged and is still going on. 
But the historical Christ stands in clearer 
outline to-day than at any time since the 
fourth century A. D. 

The Supremacy of Christ 

The result is that on all hands men 
acknowledge the supremacy of Jesus as 
teacher of religion and morals. His 
spiritual ideal is the highest that the 
world has ever had. The moral and 
spiritual isolation of Jesus is the greatest 
miracle of the world. The theories of 
men fail to explain him on grounds of 
natural development. All do not accept 



140 God the Father 

the necessary consequence of his su- 
premacy in character, works, words, and 
claims. All do not accept him as being 
the Son of God in essence as well as in 
character. But still his unique position 
is unchallenged. Indeed, so sharply 
does Jesus now stand out against the 
theological refinements of the middle 
ages that there is a strong tendency on 
the part of some to minimize the im- 
portance of the Apostolic teaching. The 
vagaries of the school-men are laid at the 
door of Paul who is said to have mis- 
understood Jesus and his teaching and 
to have rabbinized Christianity. " Less 
of Paul and more of Christ/ ' they say. 

All this has a specious sound and may 
catch the unthinking. It is a far cry 
from Paul to Augustine, not to say An- 
selm or Thomas Aquinas. Is Paul more 
like Augustine or Jesus in his theology ? 
Undeniably Augustine is much indebted 
to Paul and may have interpreted Paul 
at some points apart from his relation to 



The Apostolic Teaching 141 

Jesus ; but there is much in Augustine 
that does not come from Paul or Jesus. 
It was the boast of Paul that he had a 
direct revelation of the gospel of Jesus 
(Gal. i: 11 f.). We take it that medie- 
valism was a perversion of Paul, not that 
Paul perverted the teachings of Jesus. 
At any rate we must not seek for Paul's 
theology through the eyes of Augustine, 
but study Paul for ourselves. This is 
not to say that the world is not under a 
great debt both to Augustine and Calvin 
for their interpretations of Paul. But 
we must not charge Paul with the ex- 
cesses or excrescences of even the great- 
est of theological teachers. We have 
the words of Paul and the words of 
Jesus. 

The First Interpreters of Jesus 

This is a happy phrase of a recent 
writer. We must frankly admit that 
while the Apostles were with Jesus they 
failed to understand him. He was not 



142 God the Father 

like his environment and they were. 
They expected a temporal kingdom just 
before he ascended on the clouds to 
heaven : " Lord, dost thou at this time 
restore the kingdom to Israel ? " (Acts i. 
6). They contended over the first places 
in such a kingdom even on the night of 
the betrayal (Luke xxii. 24). Hence also 
the doubt that held them fast when Jesus 
rose from the dead. Slowly they were 
convinced that he had risen from the 
grave. Along with new faith came new 
hope and joy, but they were still power- 
less to carry out the Lord's commission 
to take the world for him. Nor did they 
yet apprehend fully either the person of 
Christ or his teaching. They had indeed 
a much richer store of material now that 
Jesus had risen from the grave. They 
occupied a far better standpoint on this 
side of the empty tomb. The words of 
the risen and triumphant Christ were 
ringing in their ears. But even yet they 
did not fully grasp the significance of the 



The Apostolic Teaching 143 

career of Jesus of Nazareth. But in ten 
days after Jesus went back to the Father 
a transformation came over Peter and the 
rest who were waiting for the promise 
of the Father (Acts i. 4). 

Jesus had promised to send the Holy 
Spirit to bring all things to their remem- 
brance and to teach them all things 
(John xiv. 26). "He shall take of mine 
and declare it unto you" (John xvi. 14). 
The fulfilment of this promise on the 
great Day of Pentecost is the cardinal 
fact in the apostolic history and teaching. 
These men at once enter upon a dis- 
tinctly new epoch. They grasp securely 
and clearly the spiritual significance of 
the kingdom of God and form a true 
estimate of the work, person, and teach- 
ing of Jesus in connection with it. There 
will be development after this day, but it 
will be development in harmony with 
this epoch. Once Peter will signally fail 
in courage, not in grasp of spiritual truth 
(Gal. ii. 11-21), and will woefully sin. 



144 God the Father 

It is not in harmony with the facts to say 
that after Pentecost the Apostles are as 
inadequate guides to the teaching of 
Jesus as they were before. Jesus had 
said that they would understand all things 
when the Holy Spirit came, and the 
record shows the fulfilment of that 
prophecy. 

We cannot then, in view of this teach- 
ing of Christ, carelessly brush aside the 
Apostolic teaching as unnecessary or as 
incorrect. He expressly said that he had 
yet many things to say, but that they 
could not bear them then. " Howbeit 
when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he 
shall guide you into all the truth " (John 
xvi. 12 f.). Luke begins the Acts by 
speaking of what " Jesus began both to 
do and to teach " (Acts i. 1). The 
Apostolic teaching justifies the prediction 
of Christ. These first interpreters of 
Jesus who speak under the new en- 
lightenment of the Holy Spirit strike the 
same note about the Father that Jesus 



The Apostolic Teaching 145 

did. The Acts of the Apostles is a 
proper sequel to the Gospel of Luke as 
the author feels and says (Acts i. 1). 
Peter pointedly identifies the events on 
the Day of Pentecost as the fulfilment 
of the promise of the Father which Jesus 
had made : " This Jesus did God raise 
up, whereof we are witnesses. Being 
therefore by the right hand of God ex- 
alted, and having received of the Father 
the promise of the Holy Spirit, he hath 
poured forth this, which ye see and 
hear" (Acts ii. 32 f.). Stephen boldly 
announced the purely spiritual nature of 
God who "dwelleth not in houses made 
with hands" (Acts vii. 48), a teaching 
in exact harmony with that of Jesus to 
the Samaritan woman (John iv. 21 f.), 
but entirely too advanced for the cere- 
monial and sacramental Pharisees who 
saw in it a desecration of the temple. 

It required, it is true, a vision for Peter 
to see that Gentiles could be saved with- 
out first becoming Jews. Jesus had 
J 



146 God the Father 

said : " Other sheep I have, which are 
not of this fold " (John x. 16). Jesus had 
also made all meats clean when he re- 
buked the pettifogging Pharisees who 
had a doctrine about eating with un- 
washed hands (Mark vii. 19). But it 
was not till Peter actually stood inside of 
the house of Cornelius the Gentile that he 
was able to say : " Of a truth I perceive 
that God is no respecter of persons : but 
in every nation he that feareth him, and 
worketh righteousness, is acceptable to 
him ,, (Acts x. 34). He did not mean 
that Cornelius was already saved before 
he came, for he expressly states that he 
was to speak words " whereby thou shalt 
be saved, thou and all thy house " (Acts 
xi. 14). What he means is that Cornelius 
can be saved and remain a Gentile. God 
will be Father of Gentlies as well as 
Jews. This is indeed a great light ; it is 
the same light that Jesus shed, but that 
Peter had until now been too blind to 
see. 



The Apostolic Teaching 147 

The Gospel Records Later in Date than the 
Earliest Epistles 
The facts just appealed to follow nat- 
urally the closing scenes in the Gospels. 
It may be replied that the Acts of the 
Apostles was not written till some time 
after the events here recorded. This is 
true, but it is also true of the Gospels 
themselves. In neither case, however, 
is the testimony properly invalidated. It 
is evident from the prologue to Luke's 
Gospel (Luke i. 1-3) that there were 
written sources before his Gospel was 
undertaken, probably Mark and Mat- 
thew, and still earlier and, perhaps, 
briefer sketches. There were still also 
eyewitnesses of the life of Jesus whom 
Luke consulted. The life and words of 
Jesus had been preached over a large 
part of the Roman Empire. Luke was 
an historian in method and spirit. The 
same careful accuracy claimed in his 
Gospel (Luke i. 3) is exhibited in the 
Acts. 



148 God the Father 

But, while all this is true, it can be 
justly said to those who seek unduly to 
depreciate the Apostolic teaching in com- 
parison with that of Jesus that we only 
have the words of Jesus in the writings 
of his disciples and followers. If we 
may not believe the interpretation of 
John's Epistles, why his Gospel? If 
Peter's Epistles are to be discredited, 
why accept Mark's Gospel written under 
his influence ? If Paul is a false inter- 
preter of Jesus, why follow Luke, Paul's 
companion and admirer ? If James, the 
champion of true Judaism, does not un- 
derstand Jesus, why listen to Matthew's 
Jewish Gospel? Certainly I and II 
Thessalonians antedate the earliest of our 
Gospels and probably James, I and II 
Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans, with 
possibly a number of other Epistles. 
We must on historical grounds listen to 
the Apostolic teaching if we wish to pre- 
serve the Gospels as genuine records of 
the teaching of Jesus. 



The Apostolic Teaching 149 

The Earlier and the Later Epistles Give 
the Same View of the Father 

In I Thessalonians, the earliest of 
Paul's Epistles and dating probably A. D. 
52, we find him saying : " God the 
Father" (i. 1), "our God and Father" 
(i. 3 ; iii. 11). Likewise in II Thessa- 
lonians, written a few months later, we 
see him writing, " God our Father " 
(i. 1 ; ii. 16). In James we read of "the 
Father of lights" (i. 17) and of " pure 
religion and undefiled before our God 
and Father " (i. 27). So also James says 
that with the tongue we bless " the Lord 
and Father " (iii. 9). 

In Paul's Epistles of the second and 
third groups (land II Cor., Gal. Rom., 
Phil., Col., Eph.) we meet very often 
the expressions God the Father, God 
our Father. The personal letter to 
Philemon does not so speak of God. In 
Hebrews xii. 9 God is called "the 
Father of spirits." In I and II Peter, 
Jude, I and II John (not III John) we 



150 God the Father 

likewise see the expression God the 
Father. In the Pastoral Epistles God 
is not specifically called Father, but 
rather " God our Saviour " (I Tim. i. 
1 ; Titus i. 3 ; II Tim. i. 10). In the 
Revelation of John only twice is God 
called Father (i. 6 ; xiv. 1) and then he 
is spoken of as the Father of Jesus the 
Lamb of God. But there is no radical 
difference in conception in the various 
Apostolic writings save in the Pastoral 
Epistles. This group is dominantly ec- 
clesiastical and soteriological in idea, and 
hence Paul seems to prefer Saviour to 
Father. Each writer approaches the 
idea of God the Father from his own 
standpoint. But it is the same God and 
Father of us all who is presented whether 
in Thessaloniansor in Ephesians, whether 
in James or Paul, whether in John or 
Peter. 



The Apostolic Teaching 151 

The Teaching of Christ about the Father 
the Norm of the Apostolic Teaching 
The Apostles speak of God as Father 
much more frequently than do the Old 
Testament writers. They have caught 
the new accent of Jesus whose great aim 
was so to reveal the Father to men that 
reconciliation would be made between 
God and man on the basis of his atoning 
death. The word Father is on the lips 
of Jesus at every turn and he uses it far 
more frequently than do the authors of 
the Acts and Epistles. This is but nat- 
ural. No one had the right to speak in 
such familiar terms of the Father as did 
Jesus. God was his Father in a sense 
not true of others, and to set forth the 
Father was his highest aim, while the 
Apostles, taught by the Spirit, bore wit- 
ness to Christ. But under the tutelage 
of the Holy Spirit the teaching of Jesus 
bears rich results. The Apostles pro- 
claim God as Father in exactly the same 
sense that Jesus announced him to men. 



152 God the Father 

God is the Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ (Eph. i. 3) in a special sense. He 
is in some sense the Father of all men, 
as Paul says : " Our God and Father of 
all, who is over all, and through all, and 
in all " (Eph. iv. 6), where he seems to 
be speaking of God in his eternal rela- 
tions to all the universe, though the con- 
text here clearly points to the saved. 
Compare what Paul said on Mars Hill : 
" For we are also his offspring. Being 
thus the offspring of God we ought not 
to think that the Godhead is like unto 
gold, or silver, or stone, graven by 
art and device of man " (Acts xvii. 
28 f.). 

But this general sonship of all men 
does not save them. God " commands 
men that they should all everywhere re- 
pent " (Acts xvii. 30). The fact that 
God is the Father of our spirits does not 
constitute us members of the family of 
God, the household of faith. " If any 
man hath not the spirit of Christ, he is 



The Apostolic Teaching 153 

none of his " (Rom. viii. 9). " As many 
as are led by the Spirit of God, these are 
sons of God " (Rom. viii. 14). These 
alone " have the spirit of adoption where- 
by we cry, Abba, Father/ ' These alone 
are children of God, heirs of God, and 
joint heirs with Christ (Rom. viii. 15 f.). 
This is in exact accord with the teaching 
of Jesus concerning God the Father who 
in one sense is the Father of all men, but 
on the other hand includes in his family 
and kingdom only those who have been 
born again, who have made peace with 
the Father by Christ's death and through 
a repentant heart. It is probably in this 
same twofold sense that Paul uses the 
term Saviour as applied to God when in 
I Tim. iv. 10 he speaks of God as "the 
Saviour of all men, specially of them 
that believe." He sends the rain on all 
(Acts xiv. 17) as Paul showed at Lystra. 
But he is Father and Saviour of those 
that believe in a special and glorious 
sense not true of those who are still in 



154 God the Father 

the " far country " and whose destiny 
will be the outer darkness away from 
the Father's home and the Father's 
love. 



CHAPTER X 

Jesus Conception of God the Ruling 
Idea in Theology. 

" Sir, we would see Jesus " (John xii. 21). 
" Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us " (John xiv. 
8). 

/T has been hard for men to see God, 
though he is not far from any of us. 
We have blinded our eyes so that we 
cannot see. We grope helplessly in the 
dark. The light of reason is clear enough 
to show us that God is, but sin has such a 
grip on our wills that we cannot act on 
this light. We have in our sinful pride 
wandered away from God. We flounder 

!55 



156 God the Father 

in a sea of doubt as we struggle back to- 
ward God. 

Theology a Changing Quantity 

There is theology and theology. 
There is evangelical theology and 
rationalistic theology. There is sacra- 
mental theology and experimental the- 
ology. Radical differences divide the- 
ology into opposing camps. Some of 
these lines of divergence reappear in every 
age. The emphasis on the form as a 
means of salvation as opposed to the spirit- 
ual reality was, if possible, sharper in 
Christ's day than in ours. Mere tradi- 
tionalism suits some minds and costs less 
expenditure of mental energy than a vital 
spiritual experience. In each type of 
theology there is growth and adaptation. 
All life is change, and a live theology is 
ever seeking new light from the word 
of life. Theology is man's attempt to 
interpret the revelation of God in Christ 
and the Bible and the world. This at- 



Ruling Idea of Theology 157 

tempt varies in different men and in 
different epochs of the world. Each 
age comes into possession of a new angle 
of vision, a new vantage ground of inter- 
pretation ; precisely as science is not ab- 
solute, but is ever changing its concep- 
tions of the universe. The truth in the 
old remains, while the new is tested for 
its truth. 

This is not saying that one form of 
theology is as good as another. Far from 
it. The truth is the goal of theology. 
Much truth has long been won and this 
cannot be taken away from us. But we 
do not yet apprehend all truth. We are 
still pressing on. Theology is not un- 
reliable because of this changing flow of 
life. It would be unreliable and useless 
if it were not able to assimilate new truth 
and adjust itself to new conditions. Life 
will crack the hardest moulds in rock or 
mind in time. Theology should be 
neither old nor new, but embrace the 
truth in both. 



158 God the Father 

God the Center of all Theology 
Theology is the doctrine of God which 
we formulate. There is this common 
bond, then, in all theology worthy of 
the name. It is an honest effort to pre- 
sent orderly conceptions of the truth 
about God in all his relations, and espe- 
cially in his relation to man. It is but just 
to say that while the word theology has 
God as the center, not all theology pre- 
serves this etymological truth. Some 
theology is man-centered and not God- 
centered. But clearly the right way to 
approach the discussion of man is from 
the point of view of God. We need 
the man Christ Jesus to show us what 
God the Father is, but even here he is 
showing us God, and it is God who has 
sent his Son in the flesh to reveal himself 
to us. Christ is not man's effort to find 
God, but God's endeavor to reveal him- 
self to men. We can never reach the 
truth about God or man if we put man 
in the center of our theological system. 



Ruling Idea of Theology 159 

Christ the Starting Point of Modern The- 
ology 
Christ is the most clearly drawn char- 
acter in history. His picture fills the eye 
of the civilized world. It is no mere pic- 
ture. The reality of this supreme per- 
sonage is the chief fact in history. His 
ethical teachings satisfy the demands of 
the enlightened conscience. His spirit- 
ual sympathies touch the hearts of men. 
He is the world's Ideal become real. 
Jesus is then the meeting place for those 
who love God and those who merely 
love their fellowmen. The theological 
and the non-theological can find common 
ground in him. If we expect to win the 
sceptic, the agnostic, the worldly, the in- 
different, the grossly sinful, the only hope 
of so doing is in Jesus. The modern 
apologetic, if it is to become effective 
and not be a mere dialectic, must start 
with the acknowledged truth in the per- 
son of Jesus. The enemies of religion 
well understand this obstacle in their 



160 God the Father 

path. Lines of opposition that start far 
away from Christ are laid ultimately 
against his supreme position in the hearts 
of men. So long as Christ rules the lives 
of men, Christianity dominates the world. 

Christ's Conception of God the Truth 

God is absolute and we cannot take in 
the absolute, for we are finite. Jesus 
did not reveal God in abstract argument. 
He revealed God in the concrete, in 
himself, the only begotten Son. God is 
like Jesus. If men wish to get definite 
conceptions of God the Father, let them 
look at Jesus. Jesus simply, but abruptly 
said : "I am the truth." We get lost in 
the mazes of argument and the truth 
escapes us. In Jesus the truth is trans- 
parent and is personified. Hence the 
revelation of God the Father in Christ 
is final. The prophecies pointed in 
outline to him. The Apostles sought 
by interpretation to explain him. We 
aim to group together the entire picture 



Ruling Idea of Theology 161 

in prophecy, historical fact, and interpre- 
tation. But we shall fail even thus to 
see correctly Christ and God in Christ 
unless we experience God in our hearts. 
For Christ came not to reveal the Father 
simply as an intellectual or historical fact, 
but as a spiritual experience in the life 
of the sinner. This is ultimate truth 
verified in the spirit of man who is 
brought again into vital union with 
God by the Holy Spirit. 

Christ's Conception of God Unifies 
Revelation 

All the slow stages of Israelitish history 
culminate in the teaching of Jesus about 
God the Father. The prophets in those 
different epochs fall into harmony around 
this great organizing idea. The Apos- 
tolic writings flow out normally from 
this stream of truth. Type finds its ful- 
filment. Symbol gathers up the love of 
God in the death of Christ. The spirit 
conquers the letter. The right interpre- 



1 62 God the Father 

tation with open Bible and open mind 
becomes possible. Thus alone the reader 
gains access to the historical and spiritual 
interpretation of Scripture. 

Christ's Conception of God Satisfies the 
Reason and the Facts of Life 

The reason is not surrendered when 
one becomes a Christian. Rather is it 
satisfied. .The necessary limitations of 
the human mind make possible greater 
freedom in other directions. The first 
step in intellectual progress is made when 
one recognizes his limitations. We can- 
not explain all the problems of the uni- 
verse. We cannot solve the mysteries 
in our own complex nature. Jesus him- 
self in his twofold nature is the supreme 
mystery. And yet, waiving the mystery 
that is insoluble, the mind has rest in 
Jesus, the God-man, the mediator be- 
tween God and man. He satisfies our 
need of a helper to intercede with God 
for us. His perfect character commands 



Ruling Idea of Theology 163 

the allegiance of our hearts. We are 
willing to listen to such a man when he 
speaks of the highest and most vital 
things. The fact of sin calls for a Saviour. 
Baffled mankind need no longer be 
beaten by the tempter if refuge be taken 
in Christ. 

To Know God we Must Know Christ 

Let this be our last word about Christ 
and the Father. He would not have 
come to earth if it had not been neces- 
sary. He knew how he would be treated 
before he came. He offered his life 
a ransom for many. If men could find 
God without his help, he would not have 
come at all. Before the Incarnation, 
some had found God, it is true. To 
some God the Father manifested himself 
directly. To some the Son appeared in a 
theophany. To some the Holy Spirit 
spoke. But the world as a whole was 
in darkness. Even the Jewish world 
knew not God in spirit and in reality. 



164 God the Father 

When the Son of God came to his own 
people, descendants of Abraham and nat- 
ural heirs of the kingdom promised to 
David, they did not recognize him. His 
own people knew him not. 

But out of the great world Christ has 
found a spiritual Israel, true sons of God, 
who have responded to the message 
which he has brought to men. The 
Father calls and those who are willing to 
be his children hear his voice. It is not 
difficult to find God now, since Jesus has 
brought him near to our minds, and since 
the Holy Spirit presses home that mes- 
sage to our hearts. The sublime fellow- 
ship of the risen Christ is ours, if we will. 
" Go unto my brethren, and say to them, 
I ascend unto my Father and your Father, 
and my God and your God " (John 
xx. 17). 

The joyful task before the true children 
of God is to make known Christ's view 
of the Father. We shall best do this as 
we help men see Jesus. It is not alone 



Ruling Idea of Theology 165 

by word of exposition that this sublime 
work is to be performed. If we walk as 
Jesus walked, in his spirit and with his 
ideals, we shall show that God the Father 
indeed dwells in us. 

What the world most hungers for is 
not intellectual arguments to prove that 
God exists, but the life that silently, but 
genuinely witnesses to the presence of 
God in heart, word, and deed. The 
practice of the presence of God here and 
now is the greatest sermon to the un- 
saved and is the foretaste of heaven itself. 
If God is to be our Father hereafter, he 
must be our Father here. Jesus brought 
God the Father vividly and powerfully to 
the hearts of men in this life. He left 
that impression and that reality in the 
world as a permanent theological concep- 
tion and as a vital religious experience. 
The best teacher of the presence and 
guidance of the Father is he whose life 
is most like the life of Jesus. The union 
of the believer with Christ the true Vine 



1 66 God the Father 

should be fruitful. " For to me to live is 
Christ." That is Paul's motto and no 
higher can be expected, for that is to let 
the Incarnate Word rule the life. 



CHAPTER XI 

Summary. 

" I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God 
and your God " (John xx. 17). 

/T may be well to take a bird's-eye 
view of the whole argument as to 
the Teaching of Jesus concern- 
ing God the Father. It is impossible 
to overestimate the importance of the 
subject of this volume. It is not exag- 
geration to say that it is the most vital of 
all themes to sinful men. The very fail- 
ure of men to reach adequate truth about 
God accents the value of the revelation 
of the Father in the Son. There was 

167 



1 68 God the Father 

much revealed truth about God in the 
Old Testament, but this was not properly 
apprehended. It was not till God ex- 
pressed himself in bodily form in the 
person of Jesus Christ that the idea of 
God became real, tangible, sympathetic, 
winsome, dominating. In Christ the old 
truth became clearer, and new truth 
about the Father became possible. 

The doctrine of the Trinity becomes 
thus not only a necessity, but a comfort- 
ing truth of the Godhead. As Jesus 
revealed the Father in himself, the Holy 
Spirit reveals the Son to us that we may 
know the Father. 

God is Lord of creation. He is person 
and not the material universe. It is 
God's world, but the world is not God. 
Men are like God in a sense that animals 
are not. We bear the image of God in 
our immortal spirits, an image so blurred 
by sin that we no longer deserve to be 
called the children of God who is in fact 
the Creator of our souls and bodies. But 



Summary 169 

what we have lost can be restored by the 
new birth of the Holy Spirit. This new 
spiritual birth is made possible by the 
atoning death of Christ as the sacrifice for 
sin. Those who are thus reconciled to 
God become members of the family of 
God, enter the kingdom, and have eter- 
nal life. 

The apostolic teaching is an interpreta- 
tion of the teaching of Jesus by men who 
were specially equipped by personal ex- 
perience with Jesus and his followers. 
More than this they had also, for Jesus 
had promised them the Holy Spirit 
to be their teacher. It is natural and 
proper that the fundamental and ax- 
iomatic truths of Christ should receive 
fuller expansion in the Apostolic teaching. 
It is a false antithesis to depreciate the 
apostolic teaching by the teaching of 
Jesus. They were not only the first and 
authoritative interpreters of Christ, but 
we should not have the words of Jesus 
save for what they have written. Jesus 



170 God the Father 

wrote only in the hearts of men, with the 
Spirit, not with pen and ink. 

The ruling idea in present day theology 
is Jesus' teaching concerning God the 
Father. It is bound to be the dominant 
conception in all spiritual Christianity. 
A formal theology that hides Christ from 
men behind theological phrases conceals 
God from men. It is when men see 
Christ that they know God. Jesus is 
the Saviour from sin and not theology, 
not even orthodox theology. Christo- 
centric theology is the kind that should 
enlist the mind and heart of the teacher of 
men, and even this theology should not 
come between Christ and the sinful 
heart. 



THE END 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 

A 
Alienation from God, 102. 
Anselm, 140. 
Apologetic of Jesus, 65. 
Apostolic teaching, 138. 
Aquinas, 140. 
Atheism, 2, 6. 
Augustine, 140. 

B 

Becoming sons of God, 119. 
Believers actual children of God, 117. 
Buddha, 33. 
Buddhist, 11. 

C 
Center of all theology, 158. 
Character of God according to Jesus, 37. 
Children of God, who are, 1 1 7 f. 

duties of, 133. 

privileges of, 128. 

destiny of, 135. 

171 



172 Index of Subjects 

Choice of the Father and choice of the child, 123. 

Christ the starting point, 159. 

Christ's conception of God true, 160. 

Claim of Jesus about his message, 31. 

Confucius, 33. 

Created in image of God, 101. 

E 
Earlier and later Epistles, 149. 
Eternal life, 109. 
Eternal punishment, 108. 
Evil, origin of, 4. 
Evolution, 3, 4, 8, 11. 

F 

Father and the Son, 43. 

Fiske, 8. 

First interpreters of Jesus, 141. 

G 

Gospels and earliest Epistles, 147. 

H 

Hades, 108 f. 

Haeckel, 7. 

Harmony in work of Father and Son, 61. 

Heaven, 109. 



Index of Subjects 173 

Hegel, 8. 

Helen Keller, 2. 

Hell, 1 08. 

Holy Spirit, a person, 75. 

and Jesus, 72. 

and the Father, 70. 

blasphemy against, 78. 

promises of the Father about, 80. 
Hope for a godless world, 2. 
Homer, 12. 
Huxley, 94. 

I 
Importance of a knowledge of God, 1 . 
Interflow of knowledge between the Father and 
the Son, 59. 

J 

Johannine question, The, 25. 
Judaism, 9. 
Jupiter, 12. 

K 

Kelvin, 7. 

Kingdom of God, 98. 

Knowing God, 163. 



1 74 Index of Subjects 

L 

Lost children of God, in. 

Love of the Father sends the Son, 25. 

M 
Materialism, 7. 

Modern ideas about God, 1, 6 ff. 
Mahomet, 33. 

N 
Nature of Father and Son, 52. 
Norm of the apostolic teaching, 151. 

O 

Old Testament, attitude of Jesus toward, 14. 
basis of Jesus' teaching, 14. 
character of God in, 21. 
God's covenant with men in, 22. 
progressive character of, 16. 
teaching about God the Father, 

18. 
two views of, 16 f. 



Paul, 140. 
Plato, 10. 



Index of Subjects 175 



Q 

Qualified to reveal the Father, 27. 

R 

Reason and Christ's conception of God, 162. 
Reconciliation possible in Christ, 112. 
Revealer of God to men, 24. 
Ritschlianism, 9, 33, 59. 
Romanes, Geo. J., 8. 
Ruling idea in theology, 155. 

S 
Satan, 5. 

Satisfaction of the Father in the Son, 67. 
Socrates, 14, 
Son and the Father, 43. 
Son of God, 56 f. 
Son of man, 58. 
Spencer, 7, 94. 
Stephen, Sir Leslie, 7. 
Supremacy of Christ, 139. 

T 

Theology a changing quantity, 156. 
Trinity, fact of, 70. 

order of Persons in, 76. 



1 76 Index of Subjects 

u 

Unifying power of Christ's conception, 161. 

Unique relation between Father and Son, 44. 

Unitarian, 33. 

Unity, character between Father and Son, 63. 

Universal fatherhood of God, 1 1 7 f. 

Universe, God more than, 92. 

Unsaved and God, 100. 

W 

World, God's revelation to, 85. 

God's love for, 95. 

senses of term with Jesus, 88. 
World view of Jesus, 85. 



Zeus, 12. 
Zoroaster, 33. 



INDEX OF TEXTS 



1 1 Samuel vii. 


*3 


[6, 22 


Matthew viii. 


12 108 


i Chronicles xvii. 


12 f. 


x. 28 


109, 130 


22 






32 f. 

xi. 27 


34 
32, 49. 62 


Psalm lxviii. 5 




20 


28 


33.51 


lxxxix. 3-5 




22 


xii. 28 


74. 79 


ciii. 13 




20 


3i f. 


79. I0 5 


Jeremiah xxxi. 


9 


J 9 


34 

45 


103 

107 


Hosea xi. 1 




J 9 


xiii. 


128 


Malachi ii. 10 




20 


38 
xiv. 33 


89, 103 
3 1 


Matthew i. 23 




3o 


xv. 6 


106 


iii. 11 




36 


xvi. 16 f. 


35,49 


1 7 




64 


33 


99 


iv. 1 




74 


xvii. 5 


13.46 


8 




86 


xviii. 10 


49 


v. 20 




106 


xix. 26 


4i 


22 




109 


xx. 28 


125 


48 




!35 


xxii. 13 


108 


vi. 9 


40, 1 3° 


15 


104 


L 






I 


77 



1 7 8 



Index of Texts 



Matthew xxii. 


29 


15 


Mark vii. 19 


146 


42-45 


15 


,53 


viii. 36 


93 


3 2 




41 


ix. 7 


36 


xxiii. 33 


104, 


109 


x. 18 


163, 116 


xxiv. 14 




88 


27 


40 


21 




90 


45 


n 3 


xxv. 30 




108 


xi. 18 


108 


34 90, 99, 


1 37 


xii. 29-31 


15, 7 1 


41,46 




no 


xiv. 36 


51 


xxvi. 28 




n 3 


62 


56 


63 f. 


56 


,58 






xxvii. 46 




61 


Luke i. 1—3 


H7 


xxviii. 18 




62 


32 


44 


19 


76,98 


35 


44,73 


20 


83 


,9 J 


ii. 14 
52 


45 
47 


Mark i. 1 1 


3 1 


,45 


iii. 22 


43, 73 


ii. 10 




32 


29 f. 


79 


20 




lr 3 


iv. 18 f. 


27, 74 


iii. 29 




105 


vi. 36 


135 


32 




60 


x. 16 


35 


34 f. 




136 


21 


5i, 74 


iv. 1 




74 


22 


33,5i 


4i 




93 


xi. 13 


81 


vi. 14 f. 




125 


xii. 6 f. 


132 


4i 




93 


xv. 7 


125 



Index of Texts 



179 



Luke xv. 10 






125 


John 


iii. 1 


6 2 


5,44, 


11-32 






97 






68, 


95, 113 


xvi. 23 






108 




17 




96 


26 






109 




18 




44, 108 


xviii. 19 






40 


iv. 


10 




32 


xix. 10 


100, 


no 




21 f. 




145 


xxi. 26 






88 




23 




50 


xxii. 24 






142 




24 




38,93 


42 




5i 


,68 




34 




32, 74 


xxiii. 34 






in 


v. 






66 


46 






52 




17 




48,94 


xxiv. 49 






82 




18 
19 




48 
61 


John i. 1 


28, 


29 


,59 




20 


50, 59, 96 


3 






87 




23 f. 




62 


10 




87 


, 9 1 




25 


56, 


94, 112 


12 


115, 


121 




26 




61 


*3 






123 




30. 




59 


14 


28, 


29 


,43 




37 




36 


17 






25 




39 




14, 15 


18 


29, 


43 


,68 




40 




124 


ii. 16 






48 


vi 


32 f. 


34, 49, 92 


19 






n 3 




36 




107 


iii. 3 






119 




44 


34, 


107, 123 


5,7 






120 




46 




35 


n 






26 




57 




35 



i8o 



Index of Texts 



John vi. 65 


35 


John 


xii. 31 




9i 


70 


105 




44-50 


26 


vii. 12 


86, 91 




47 




86,96 


16 


59 


xii- 


-xvii. 




66, 75 


39 f - 


81 


xiii. 


3 




62 


vii-x. 


66 


xiv. 


6 


36, 


55, 107 


viii. 16, 19 


36 




7 




64 


23 


90,99 




8 




155 


27 


87 




9 


24,37,68 


39 


105 




11 




55 


42 


105 




15 




*35 


44 


105 




16 




70, 82 


49 


49 




23 37, 


JI 7, i33 


55 


50 




26 


75 


> 7 6 , 143 


ix. 39 


86 




28 




64,89 


58 


29 


XV. 


1-10 




J 33 


x. 15 


50 




19 




90 


16 


146 




26 




76 


3°. 33. 


34-3 6 57 


xvi. 


7 




82 


xi. 4 


50 




8 




84 


9 


89 




10 




50 


25 


92 




12 f. 




77^ i44 


4i 


51, 60 




14 




138, 143 


xii. 21 


155 




28 




16, 67 


27 


46 




32 




67 


28 


3 6 > 6 9 


xvii. 


2 




67 



Index of Texts 



181 



John xvii. 


3 


42 


Romans viii. 9 


J 53 


5 


54, 89 


> 9 1 


14 


!53 


6 




42 


15 123, 


J53 


ii 


54, 89, 


115 


26 f. 


84 


18 

20 f. 




85 

54 


Galatians i. 11 f. 


141 


23 




55 


ii. 11-21 


H3 


24 
25 f. 

xviii. 36 


16, 
9c 


43 
115 

,99 


Ephesians i. 3 
ii. 12 


152 
2 


xx. 17 69, 136, 
167 


164, 


Colossians i. 17 


92 


22 




77 


1 Thessalonians i. 1 


149 


28 




69 


3 


149 


Acts i. 1 


144, 


i45 


iii. 11 


149 


4 
8 
ii. 32 f. 




H3 

82 

i45 


1 Timothy i. 1 


150 




iv. 10 


J53 


vii. 48 




i45 


11 Timothy i. 10 


150 


x. 34 

xi. 14 




146 
146 


Titus i. 3 


150 


xiv. 17 




!53 


Hebrews ii. 11 


136 


xvii. 27 
28 f. 




2 
152 


xii. 9 


149 


30 




152 


James i. 27 


149 



182 



Index of Texts 



James iii. 9 149 

1 Peter i. 3 89 

1 John i. 1 28 



Revelation i. 6 


150 


xi. 15 


99 


xiv. 1 


150 



The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the 
Kingdom of God and the Church 

BY 

Geerhardus Fos> Ph.D., D.D. 
PRESS NOTICES. 

" This is a thorough yet compact study of Christ's teaching on the 
Kingdom and the Church." Auburn Seminary Review. 

"A vigorous and discriminating discussion of a vital theme. . . will be 
read with help and satisfaction by a large audience. ' ' The Baptist Ar- 
gus. 

"The discussion in this volume is of a great question, and the treat- 
ment is attractive and luminous." The Herald and Presbyter. 

"A scholarly volume. . . . the whole argument is well expressed and 
worthy of profound consideration." The Examiner. 

" Scholarly, comprehensive and condensed. The discussion shows 
wide reading of the literature of the subject, evangeucal conviction and 
feeling, and great skill in the use of exegetical power. The conclu- 
sions reached, as briefly restated in the closing chapter, will commend 
themselves to earnest and moderate men, and the whole discussion will 
be fascinating and suggestive to trained students." N. Y. Observer. 

"Impartial, reverent and very careful. . . . Dr. Vos' standpoint is at 
once modern and temperate. His study will be of value, not merely to 
the trained student but to the general reader as well. ' ' The Church- 
man. 

" The author has given a clear, strong, convincing argument in re- 
gard to his conception of the nature and place of the Kingdom of God 
in the world. It is a book that is profitable for reading, study and re- 
reading. " The Midland Methodist. 

"A scholarly exposition of what is recognized to be the dominant 
theme of Christ's teaching. Especially valuable is the exegesis of Pe- 
ter's confession and Christ's consequent declarations." The Congrega- 
tionalist. 

i imo. Cloth bound. Pp. vi, 203. Price 75 cents. 



The Teaching of Jesus Concerning His 
Own Mission 

BY 

Frank Hugh Foster, Ph.D., D.D. 
PRESS NOTICES. 

" The style is clear, the thought elevated, the topics treated of are, 
in their logical deductions, extremely practical. Students of the Bible 
generally will find this a very useful volume to peruse and possess." 
N. Y. Observer. 

" If this first volume of this series is a fair specimen and representative 
of those that will follow, the series will not lack in ability or interest. 
Dr. Foster's position is that of the conservative scholar who neverthe- 
less is familiar with current critical investigations. The style of presen- 
tation is clear and admirably adapted to the needs of the layman and the 
student." The Interior. 

1 * This is a wonderfully interesting, suggestive and stimulating little 
book." The Baptist Teacher. 

il A very thoughtful and helpful book. . . will be found instructive 
and quickening. ' ' The Examiner. 

"The book is the work of a thorough scholar, is conservative yet 
progressive, and gives a remarkably wholesome presentation of a very 
important subject." The Baptist Argus. 

" Scholarly but popular. . . will be found extremely useful to all who 
desire a concise but accurate and comprehensive presentation of the lead- 
ing teachings of Jesus concerning his mission." Baptist Review and 
Expositor. 

"Clear and simple enough for the intelligent layman, but not unhelp- 
ful to the clergyman who wants clearer ideas as to his Lord's atoning 
work." The Treasury. 

i imo. Cloth bound. Pp. viii, 136. Price 75 cents. 



SEP 7 1904 



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